Giving Up Chocolate – For Good

Chocolate and sweets have been faithful companions for most of my life… until a few years ago. My journey with giving up chocolate and sweets has been quite a rollercoaster, spanning more than half a decade. I tried to give up chocolate and sweets several times… over and over again… and I succeeded, but it was never permanent. After the self-restraint I always slipped back and indulged in chocolates and sweets even more, as if there was no tomorrow.

I have always had a sweet tooth – wait, I mean many sweet teeth!

Sugar was my way of sweetening up my life.

In summer, when we went to France for our yearly vacation, I would stock up on sweets and brought bags full of sweets back home. My brothers and I were only allowed to eat sweets on Saturdays. Sometimes, when I asked really nicely and with a sweet voice, my mother would allow me to have some sweets on other days as well.

Then I grew older and started to earn my own money – how delightful was that! I could go and buy chocolates and ice cream, whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Who cared about alcohol when I could have chocolates and cakes? Well, it’s not that I avoided alcohol completely… I did start drinking when I was 15 because that’s what everybody did, but boy-oh-boy did that not taste good at all. Good thing I had chocolate to indulge in to take away some of the bad taste of the alcohol!

At some point I realised that I was a chocoholic. Sweets, and especially chocolate, would have a soothing effect on me. Chocolate gave me great comfort when I felt alone, unloved and not met for just being me. What I really craved was to be truly met and deeply loved.

Even when I hadn’t seen my mum all day she would hardly greet me when I came home; she would be watching TV with her headphones on, secretly eating chocolate. I felt incredibly lonely because I felt less important to her than her TV and chocolate. I went into my room and cried for not being met or seen just for being me, a beautiful little girl. So, of course, I ate more chocolate.

I reconciled with my mum long ago and we have had many opportunities to talk openly about this, in addition to everything else in my childhood that I found difficult. We now have a deeper understanding, love and connection than ever before.

The actual journey of ‘giving up chocolate and sweets’ however took many years, going through a lot of trial and error, because it all came from a need to ‘fix’ the problem rather than from choosing a genuine and loving care for myself and my wellbeing. I went through many phases and I would manage to give up chocolate for a few weeks or maybe even a few months here and there, but never permanently.

I would always fall back to being soothed and numbed by chocolate instead of dealing with the hurt inside. I could NOT imagine living my life without chocolate. I remember thinking it would be next to impossible not to have that chocolate sweeten up my life. What would I do with myself?

It was easy to think I would manage to stop right after I’d had a feast! Right then and there I had had enough, I felt sick, emotional, sad and racy, and thought to myself, “that’s it, I’m done”. But I was just like people who have hangovers that tell themselves they will never drink again… until the next weekend, or even the next day. Sometimes I had so much willpower I didn’t have any sweets for several days, but when I went to the store it was as if I had to make up for the days I hadn’t had any sweets. How clever. Of course, then I bought enough supplies of sweets for several days, even weeks. And then I would try to quit again ­– it was a constant battle, a very vicious cycle.

Through all these years though, it was like I had a little part inside of me that truly never ever gave up and I knew for sure that one day in the future I would not need to use any willpower at all to get rid of my sweet tooth and quit eating chocolate. So I held on to that part in the midst of indulgence. I knew the day would arrive that chocolate wasn’t going to be a part of my life any longer.

I became aware that I was getting more and more sensitive to sweets and I started to feel the effect the sugar had on my physical and emotional health. I would become very emotional before my period, and I could feel the constant underlying raciness inside my body more and more. When I went to bed I could feel my racy pulse and uneasiness inside, which made it hard to fall asleep.

In the end it became very clear that this was a pattern that I no longer wanted in my life and so I started to make choices that helped me heal the hurts that had forever kept me imprisoned, a victim of my past.

I kept connecting more to my body with the help of an esoteric practitioner. With their ongoing and unwavering love and support I am dedicated to go deeper and truly let go of my hurts and my behaviours, layer by layer.

I’m not saying that I’m totally one hundred percent refined sugar free now, but I know I will get there. I am just thrilled to not have the addiction anymore and I feel so much more joy-full and harmonious inside and more mentally stable and less emotional. I’m noticing that there are so many positive side effects from not eating sugar! I have definitely become more aware – more aware of my feelings, more in tune with my mind, my thoughts and reflections. I am learning to truly connect to my body and to honour the signals it gives me.

Chocolate has not been a part of my life for some years now: giving up chocolate for good has allowed me to know that no amount of chocolate can ever fill up the void or drown out the sadness of childhood experiences. I am a grown woman, and what has brought life-changing outcomes has been to take deep care of myself and understand that I am entirely responsible for my own choices.

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Born in France, but raised, and still live, near Oslo in Norway. I like being active, preferably outdoors, walks in mountains considered a favourite, but I totally love the sun and beach...so why live in chilly Norway I wonder?! Four awesome brothers, one nephew – I welcome many more as I adore children and their natural playfulness. Have mastered a Master in Psychology, now it's all about mastering a simple, joyful, loving and healthy life, which I do surrounded by lovely friends.

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775 Comments

Carmin Hall says:August 6, 2015 at 10:42 am

Nathalie, it is definitely honesty & not will power that enables us to kick a habit or addiction – being honest about why we ‘need’ that substance is the start of healing, as is not being hard on ourselves.

So true Carmin, being honest about what we are really doing to our self and our body when we eat things that are not good for us is key, and then asking why we are doing so…why do we feel the need to do something we know doesn’t support us.
And, I love that you put in not being hard on our self, as the guilt and beating up thoughts we can have don’t help at all, they can be just as harmful. When we take something out of our life because we genuinely care and love ourselves, it is easy, there is no trying and no will power because the need is not there.

It often has amazed me the ease I have let some foods and drinks go, and then how difficult I find it to make the choice to feel what another food or drink is doing to my body. The one thing I know is like you have shared is that with dedication to developing greater honesty and love for yourself that you out grow the need for such destructive activity. That is incredibly liberating.

I can relate to what you say here Vanessa, and it is amazing to reflect on this and appreciate how easy it has been to just let go of food that I have chosen to eat for some many years that at the time I really enjoyed; but once I had the understanding of what they where doing to my body I just stopped. Food is greatly important to me as it really makes the difference to how I work, relate with others and am with myself. Something that I had not considered until the last 5 years.

You make a good point here, Amina how food makes a difference to not only our body in how it looks and feels but also how we work, relate to others and choices we make for ourselves. This of course makes sense as it is our body we take to them! And as you say this is not often considered.

kerstin Salzer says:August 18, 2015 at 12:57 pm

I agree, Amina, the effect food has on our body, our wellbeing, our emotions is enourmous. As food is often the endresult of how I have behaved during the day, it can be when I am angry, I have more longing to sugary things than when I feel harmonious. When I do not give way this longing but deal with my anger my body has the chance to come back to a more harmonious and still state.

mary sanford says:September 5, 2015 at 3:23 pm

This is a very honest blog allowing us all to take a closer consideration to what we eat, and like you Amina and others who have added comments, I have found the more I take care of myself the more I am able to let go of the foods that actually kept me in an old pattern of life. As I break down these old habits and patterns I find naturally that the foods I once ate fall away and the urge to have them goes. Thanks to Serge Benhayon, the many students of Universal Medicine should be studied by scientists as self-care and self-love hold the key to illness and disease.

Diana says:September 6, 2015 at 8:17 pm

That is also true for me Amina, I have noticed the effect food has on me in how I work and relate with others and myself. When eating food that does not support me I can get impatient, agitated or just tired not feeling energy to take on activities.

Richard Mills says:September 13, 2015 at 3:05 pm

I agree Amina and it has amazed me how certain foods have simply dropped away once I healed the issues I was carrying. It has been a regular feature that I look back and realise ‘I don’t eat that anymore’ – when once I felt a hook into it.

Sylvia Brinkman says:November 8, 2015 at 7:12 am

And what I noticed is that on the moment I truly feel why I eat sometning and what the effect is afterwards on how I feel I am directly in the mood to take that habbit out of my life. The food can be something that we are or were controlled by. It is imprisoning us, keeping us stuck in daily patterns which are not bringing live in our life. That inspires me very much to look at all my other behaviours..

Lindell Parlour says:August 17, 2015 at 7:46 pm

Vanessa I totally agree with what you write. Some foods just fall away and others stay. My long term stayer has been sugar and just like Nathalie I have tried and tried again to give up. It wasn’t until I nominated that I no longer want to be sad that I could see that sugar was feeding my sadness. With this awareness I exposed sugar for what it was and what it was doing to my body. I’ve been ‘clean’ for 3 weeks but I noticed when I read Nathalie’s blog that my spirit was trying to penetrate my wall of love and get back in. It was an inner struggle in parts to read Nathalie’s blog.

I loved reading your comment Lindell. It hadn’t really occurred to me that a food could be feeding an emotion like sadness but I can feel this is true. This has really given me dome food for thought … or maybe food for feel….

JY says:August 24, 2015 at 1:06 am

Really great point Lindell that some foods feed an emotion in the body. When I look back I too can see how some things I no longer felt I needed just fell away like caffeine, but sugar is still an ongoing battle although I do not eat refined sugar I still have fruit which has the same effect and your comment has given me something to consider. Thank you.

Deborah McKay says:August 31, 2015 at 10:37 am

What an amazing revelation Lindell “I could see that sugar was feeding my sadness”. I can now feel that how that’s what it was doing for me all those years and enabling me to bury the sadness instead of allowing it to rise up to the surface and deal with it.

Loretta Rappos says:March 10, 2016 at 10:05 am

Interesting point you make Vanessa- that sugar can feed an unresolved emotions n like sadness- I hadn’t thought of this, but I can feel it to be true. And it makes sense why I still crave sugar on occasions to avoid feeling deep sadness.

Elaine Arthey says:September 13, 2017 at 3:58 pm

Thank you Lindell, sugar in the form of honey has come back into my life recently and I can see how it feeds my sadness. It’s like a lot of substances, it makes you feel “better” for a little while ( when it temporarily substitutes happiness for sadness) and then it’s effect wears off and you feel even worse than before the indulgence, It is more than a vicious circle, it is a spiralling down. This is why we need to catch ourselves and bring back the confirming and appreciation of ourselves on a consistent level and thus hold ourselves in that place where sugar or sweet things have no hold.

Lee Green says:August 19, 2015 at 6:55 pm

Excellent observation Vanessa we need to bring more dedication and honesty to every choice in order to support us to be all of who we truly are.

I have found that the only way I can truly give something up is to keep feeling the effects that it has on my body. I might have the intention to give up a certain food because I can feel it isn’t great for me whether that is because it causes bloating, a raciness or dullness but I may keep eating that food for sometime continuing to feel into the effects. Usually when I have felt that the effects are harming a few times, it then becomes easy to give up the food and say no more. Usually the food is then given up for good because it has been a choice that comes from my body.

Donna this approach also works for me too. I remember when I used to eat Tahini for example and loved it. Being made of sesame seeds I always thought it must be good for me. And then all of a sudden I would eat it and get a blocked nose and mucus. I am so used to having a clear nose and breathing that it was a very easy message to listen to. More tahini and more mucus or no tahini and clear breathing. This one was an easy choice. However I have also noticed that there are foods that are having a more subtle effect on me and usually far less physical and more a sense of heaviness or a dulling in some way. This asks for even more honesty from me.

It can be so subtle the messages that our bodies let us know, I have come to notice the raciness that sugary foods have on me or even sweeter foods.

Marian Rudeforth says:August 29, 2015 at 5:02 pm

Thank you Donna for saying this so simply and clearly. It’s only recently that I’ve truly allowed myself to keep feeling the effects of a food on my body, rather than know that it’s happening but ‘block it out’. No longer can I put up with the increased heart rate, the nerviness, the flustered feeling, the taking on of other people’s ‘stuff’, not to mention other less salubrious effects – I just cannot do it anymore, the body is so loud. As you say, once we REALLY allow ourselves to feel the effects, we just don’t want that food anymore and it quite easy to let it slip out of our diet. Sometimes I find I’ve just ‘forgotten’ about a particular food, I ‘forget’ to buy it for example, and I don’t even miss it. I love that natural dropping of a food!

“Sometimes I find I’ve just ‘forgotten’ about a particular food, I ‘forget’ to buy it for example, and I don’t even miss it. I love that natural dropping of a food!” I agree Marian, with “forgetting” about buying a certain food – I know this one too. Also with certain habits, I find that I don’t “do” them any more, they are no longer part of my life. A constant refining process, which as far as I can see, will continue.

Sonja Ebbinghaus says:August 18, 2015 at 4:36 am

Yes, when we come to the point that something is really harming to our body and feel ‘no, I can’t do this anymore’ – then actually the choice to let go of this, is very easy. The process till this point though may not be so easy, but without bashing and with love and understanding for oneself this can work quite well.

This is so true Carmin and Nathalie. I never imagined I could live without cheese but once I became aware of and started to be honest and deal with my inner-turmoil, rather than smothering it, the cheese just completely fell away. In fact, only three weeks after deciding to have a go at not eating it I tried some and it tasted so horrible I spat it out and have not eaten any since. That was eight years ago and I have not missed it. That is a miracle!

It is a miracle, Jonathan that we can with true support and honesty let go of foods like chocolate and cheese that we once felt we could not live without. I, too felt I could never give up cheese but I stopped eating it close to six years ago with the support of chakra-puncture sessions from a Universal Medicine practitioner and have never missed it, although I had to experience a few weeks of feeling very empty when I first stopped eating it. My digestion has improved remarkably without it and all other dairy products.

I understand what you mean Jonathan about once we deal with our issues around a certain food it feels like a miracle when the craving goes away. I feel the same about chocolate, I never thought I would be able to live without it but I have reached a point where it is not even a temptation any more. And it is not about willpower it is about dealing with the hurts under the craving. Bring on more miracles !

Great point Sandra, feeling and then dealing with the hurts under the craving reduces and then eliminates the craving. And boy it is a miracle to no longer crave something and it takes dedication to be willing to experience the hurt behind our cravings and our patterns of eating.

Kathryn Fortuna says:August 13, 2015 at 3:56 am

Jonathan if someone had told me that some day I would give up chocolate I would never have believed them. But I did 10 years ago and it wasn’t a struggle just a choice to listen to my body and connect to the truth.

Kathryn when I have given up chocolate or anything for that matter without addressing the underlying reason for eating/ doing it then it has felt like I have been attached to a rubber band. The thing that I gave up has just pinged back into my life, however when I have addressed the underlying reason first then there has been no ping back.

Kylie Connors says:August 17, 2015 at 6:41 am

And when this choice is made ‘to listen to my body’, it becomes very easy to deal with the reason behind the addiction… otherwise we can stop eating the chocolate, but use something else instead to bring us the same fix.

Lorraine Wellman says:August 18, 2015 at 1:33 pm

So important Alexis and Kylie, addressing the underlying reason for eating a certain food, whilst listening to my body at all times.

Lee Green says:August 19, 2015 at 6:58 pm

I have to appreciate this Kathryn and also how much has shifted for so many once we connect to the truth that we have living within us.

Fiona Pierce says:September 16, 2015 at 6:04 am

Kylie that’s a great point – that we can just use willpower to stop eating a certain food but then go elsewhere to find a fix if we haven’t healed the drive behind the addiction too.

Roberta Himing says:September 17, 2015 at 5:45 am

I agree Kathryn, that has been my experience also. In fact I can walk past the most aroma filled patisserie now and not be tempted at all by the fresh out of the oven goodies. I can enjoy the visual and the smell, but there is not a thing there within me now that says “I really want some of that”. Quite a different story to 10-15 years ago when the aroma, and the visual were distinct hooks, and of course the why I depended on those hooks back then – because I previously believed I was not enough and looked to be filled by something to sweeten my thoughts and beliefs. Thank goodness for all that I am learning through the Ageless Wisdom Teachings at the Universal Medicine presentations.

Willem Plandsoen says:August 13, 2015 at 4:38 am

Great sharing Jonathan, thanks. You have it with cheese, I observe it that I still have it with food in general. That it calms me, makes me feel better. I see it and I know I will be free of it, because I see that when I feel more connected to the love inside me, there is no need to eat almost anything.
That’s what Universal Medicine has brought: the deep knowing and now lived experience that I don’t need anything from the outside to feel great, and that this feeling great, amazing and lovely is all inside me, just waiting to come alive once again.

Well said Willem, ‘ this feeling great, amazing and lovely is all inside me, just waiting to come alive once again.’ So true and when we begin to accept this the foods which don’t support us drop away. I am aware I still eat too much fruit for the sugar it gives me and when I have healed the hurt it hides I won’t need it to stop me feeling.

Hannah Morden says:August 30, 2015 at 3:50 pm

Food seems to be a way of numbing, and end result of what stirs underneath that we are not willing to explore. In knowing this, I bring an understanding to my food choices that I never considered before. It is amazing what my body tells me when I listen.

Thank you for your comment Jonathan, it made me aware of all the un-supporting foods I have let go off instead of focusing on what I feel that I should let go of but still eat, with the consequences they bring. There was a bit of a “failing” issue about still eating certain un-supporting foods. But now with appreciating how I have listened to my body many times I know that this is a process of refinement. And I will get to the point of letting them go in the same way as I already easily have done before.

This is so important Diana. To appreciate where we have come from, whether it be with food or behaviours, rather than criticise ourselves because we ‘failed’ again. Knowing that when I have dealt with the underlying cause, then the need for the food will naturally fall away. For me currently I know fruit is an on-going issue.

Elizabeth Khalu says:August 9, 2015 at 5:34 am

Spot on Nathalie. Will power has never worked for me, it just felt that I had to be extremely hard on myself and then kept seeing myself as a failure when I didn’t succeed.

I agree Elizabeth to say no to a food and be consistent to me has meant that I have to pull in a force. This feels like harshness and a strictness I’m imposing on myself. None of this deals with the why I crave the item in the first place. What I am discovering is it is much more loving and even simpler to gently discover the ‘why’.

I agree that just being disciplined isn’t really dealing with it. Its about lovingly recognising what tempts me with something that truly isn’t good for me so that I gradually let that go and make more solid choices as real choices. The smell of chocolate still tempts me sometimes, but I feel my body and can now hear that it doesn’t want that. So I don’t eat it, but recognise the work in progress. I wonder whether that ever leaves completely, for it depends on how connected to the truth of my essence I am in that moment, or not, whether I get tempted or whether I am feel a ‘humanity consciousness’ like the gluttony felt in a supermarket just before Christmas.

Heather Pope says:August 20, 2015 at 6:26 pm

Oh the misery of trying to eat a certain way with willpower and then failing again and again… it was awful! Now I make choices according to what my body actually wants… it is a totally different experience.

I love this Nathalie. ‘Willpower only lasts for a moment, while truth and honesty lasts for ever.’ So true, the stress and stain that is involved in giving up something through will power alone causes so much tension to the mind and body. In contrast to the learning and evolution that can happen when we look to reason why we choose certain foods. This understanding, feeling and learning is what brings about sustained change and loving choices.

Truth and honesty is the key ingredient here. I have had the same experience with myself in healing what was not true. Then not searching for a sweet treat to take the edge of when I was feeling fragile and sensitive in my body.

I’ve definitely tried to give up lots of things using will power or ‘mind over matter’ but with very little success, and nothing that was sustainable! Honesty has definitely been the key for me in really getting to feel what’s underneath the addiction in the first place and therefore being able to be truly responsible for my choices.

Yes, I agree Angela – I too have tried will power and tried to control my life and it feels like a trap and does not really change the underlying problem. Honesty however, begins to unlock and release all the needs within and allows us to look at ourselves and the self defeating patterns that we have set up in our lives to avoid the hurt. When we begin to heal we can feel that the hold of the substance lessens and we are freer to be ourselves.

Will Power comes from my head, and he’s a bit of a bully!I don’t like bullies and get tense and resistant when he’s around. Honesty Spekes comes from my heart, and gently leads me, willingly, to a place where I can feel where my food choices come from.

Yes honesty and loving myself enough to stop doing things that are unloving. Through this I have changed many things including eliminating foods and drink that do not truly support me but it is still very much work in progress … I guess it is just a case of loving myself even more.

I agree Angela, using willpower or “mind over matter” has never worked for me longterm. Only when I allow honesty and be open to seeing why I am making the choices that don’t support me have I been able to change patterns and behaviours that are not of a true support to my body. The relationship with my body and listen to the communication it is always giving has been a great tool in learning what assists my body to feel well and vital.

Yes Angela, I have tried the will power thing too but it never worked. The only way I could give up something was to really feel how it felt in my body. If it meant I had to get sick before I’d give it up, then thats what did it. Extreme though that may seem, that is what it would take. Now that I no longer eat sugar, even by thinking about something sweet is enough to make me feel a bit racey. The feeling in my body is all I need to know that I don’t want to eat what is there as a temptation. The crazy thing is I used to get that feeling a lot, but would override it and eat it anyway! I simply hadn’t made the connection.
Listening to our bodies is such a gift and one we can’t afford to ignore.

Exactly, it is about being honest about why you eat chocolate. And as experienced, honesty is so enormously powerful, without any blame looking at the things you have done to not feel who we truly are because of a hurt that is deeply inside us.

I agree Benkt with your words “..it is about being honest about why you eat chocolate”. From my own experience before becoming a student of The Way of the Livingness, I ate chocolate when sad, feeling empty, frustrated, angry, exhausted, lonely – and the list could go on I am sure, but at that time I hadn’t allowed my awareness to even venture into the arena as to ‘why’ I was experiencing all of those things – never all at once mind you, however, often one emotion would string along after the other emotion in sequence quite often. Over time I did discover that an ’emotion’ would be the key – and not until I learned how I was choosing to allow my emotions to be in control of me was I able to connect the dots. It wasn’t a pencil, but the loving tool that I was offered to use to be able to connect the dots was the vehicle of Universal Medicine. I too have learned it has nothing to do with ‘will or won’t power’ – I found it’s a developing awareness around listening to my body and honouring that.

Love what you have written Leonne “My body speaks loud and clear to let me know what foods support it. No willpower is needed, just an ability to listen to the truth presented by my body.” Who needs diets when our will let us when we stop and listen.

I fully agree Carmin. I have even found ‘will power’ calls for a hardness with myself that I then go on to fight. Chocolate is for me now a thing of the past as being honest about why I ate it, and what it did to me was key.

Yes, will power is a distraction. If we use it we are only one step away from embarrassing ourselves. It is actually worse than that: It is fighting ourselves.

Much better to find out why we have this need, which we can do by observing ourselves when we get the desire, when we act on it and what it feels like to eat the chocolate and what it feels like in the body before, during and after eating the chocolate. After a while it becomes an easier and easier choice whether to continue and it becomes only a small decision to stop if we choose to do so.

Yes Carmin, honesty is key, willpower is just part of the game of having it and then setting ourselves up to have it again (Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t). It’s as Nathalie shares here when we start to see how we’re impacted and eventually decide we don’t want to do that anymore that we change no willpower or striving needed. And being patient and loving with us along the way knowing it will happen, and that there’s an unfolding as it does. Great blog.

true Carmin, using will-power I have found just results in finding a more ‘acceptable’ substitution, one that doesn’t break the rules, but gives you the same needed outcome – either numbing or checking out to not feel what is hurting underneath. Learning and understanding what is truly going on allows the healing to begin, and then the urge to go for the sugar, chocolate (insert favourite vice), is no longer there to have to fight.

Anne that’s true – understanding – was for me the missing link too. Without understanding I kept on being hard with me because willpower or discipline was easy for me but to deal with the hardness which related through the willpower in my body was another story, hence understanding was what helped me to heal at that point as well.

Yes Anne, ‘understanding what is truly going on allows the healing to begin’, and this comes from listening to my body. Am I using a food to numb or check out so I don’t feel a sadness or hurt underneath?

Being very honest about why we do what we do is definitely the start of healing – but I used to get very cocky and go ‘yeah, that’s why I need it’ and carried on with it. What really has supported me eventually, and continues to do so over the years is to keep deepening the connection with my body and become aware of my body’s reaction to the choices I am making, and learning to self-love at the same time. The more aware I become of, and pay attention to the bloating, the itching, the heaviness, the drowsiness, the raciness etc., the more I question if that really was the way I want to treat the body I live in.

Yes Fumiyo and the more I honour my body with foods that support it to be harmonious, the more delicious my body feels – more delicious than a few moments of pleasure from a piece of chocolate for sure!

I agree in that the willingness to feel and see, honesty and self-love start the process enabling us to live in a more loving and supporting way for ourselves, not just with foods but ideals, beliefs, behaviours and patterns as well. This still very much work in progress for me.

That is so true Carmel… it’s amazing how hard it is to get past a behaviour of ours when we are not honest with the reason we choose that behaviour or type of food in the first place. I know that this was something I learnt along the way when I was changing the way I ate. I would try force myself off foods so that I looked good on the outside to other people however on the inside of me, I wasn’t being honest enough with myself that my body never gave up on the foods and in the end I was eating the same old foods again. It really took me to be honest with how the foods made me feel in my body and if my body did not feel good it became easier for me to wonder why I was eating it, address why I want to sabotage myself and slowly the way I eat changes naturally to a healthy supportive way of eating, to which I have to refine often.

Yes absolutely. Honesty is the start to give old patterns and behaviours the chance to heal, because once they are exposed, they won’t come back that easy. Which is the often the case when we do it with our will.

Wow Carmin I agree that honesty enables us to kick e.g. an addiction. I wonder why we did not read about this very important information e.g. in any Woman magazine diet – like how to loose weight with honesty??

So true Carmin. To deal with an addiction we need to have an understanding as to what has gone on in the past years to have lead to the addiction. Being open and honest is the perfect ingredients for healing.

So true Carmin. This is the only approach that I have ever found has been truly successful. For me, before honesty came awareness and with honesty, this awareness deepened (& is still deepening) and was able to be followed by taking responsibility for my choices and then creating space for different choices.

I’ve never craved chocolate but I can relate to numbing with food. I can still find myself reaching for food when I feel anxious. I’m learning to use these reactions to stop and be honest about what is going on. They are becoming a marker now, not so much an unconscious reaction.

Absolutely – this is relatable to everything we use for reward, to numb ourselves and for comfort.
No amount of quick fix or solution will last until we consider wisely what it is we are masking, avoiding or burying and
what lies beneath this behaviour.

I am similar to you Bernadette, i preferred more savoury food than sweet but i certainly used food in the same way as you described Nathalie – to numb and not feel the hurt of what was really going on around me.

I agree Bernadette, food can be such a quick way to numb ourselves when we are feeling something that we don’t want accept it there. I am also allowing myself to feel how I can use emotions and other behaviours to numb myself when I don’t want to feel.

I used to be a chocoholic Bernadette – at one point, eating two family blocks of chocolate to myself per day! I am so appreciative of myself for not choosing this any longer and also to Serge Benhayon for showing another way to live. But as you have said, whether we choose chocolate or other food or other ‘vices’ for how to numb ourselves – it is really just showing an emotion we are not being honest with ourselves about. It is inspiring to hear how you are using the moments of “reaching for food” as a sign to stop and feel what is honestly going on, rather than continuing in the reaction to numb your anxiety. Thank you for sharing Bernadette.

I can also relate to the experience of simply replacing chocolate for another creamy, numbing food. Reminding me of the fact that it is always about the energy of the choices I am making and not about the specific food at all.

Very true Cherise it is the energy of the choices. We can do it with foods like avocado or nuts… I have found the blacklisting doesn’t work, but it I deal with the sadness or anxiousness then I won’t need the comfort.

Hmm ladies I know what you are saying about the energy behind a food or activity and I have a couple of things in mind for myself but I am also aware that right now I am choosing to not drop deeper into my body and explore what’s going on. Now where have I put those nuts ?

Gyl says:August 10, 2015 at 12:16 am

Absolutely Cherise – “It is always about the energy of the choices I am making and not about the specific food at all.” – I have found that I can just as easily replace whatever it may be with something we would call a healthier food – but the truth is the energy is exactly the same – I am using it to dull, numb or not feel.

Absolutely Cherise, I can relate with replacing one numbing food with another, even if its just the quantity of food I eat, which brings it back to, ‘it is always about the energy of the choices I am making and not about the specific food at all’.

I have used chocolate in the past to comfort me but it never became a addiction so giving it up was not a problem. However, I use foods to numb what I am feeling and also at times the quantity of food I eat is too much for my body at that time. What I am finding is that honesty is key as only through being honest with myself in feeling what is going on within me at the time, true healing occurs.

I agree about quantity Caroline, I can choose, cook and eat, the right food but slip and then eat too much. This usually dulls me for the whole day too. I have found no other organization that seriously brings awareness about food and better choices than Universal Medicine.

Rik that’s so true. No other organisation brings such awareness and understanding about food as Universal Medicine. I’ve had a lot of experience with organisations dealing with food issues and they just skim the surface.

Like you Bernadette I wasn’t really a craver of sweets, but have used food (and still do at times) to avoid my feelings. For me it has been revelatory to link anxiousness with eating, particularly nuts or other snack type foods. It can happen so fast that I can be in the fridge and munching away before I realise I am anxious. I am learning to catch the reaction and stop and feel, without reaching for the nuts, which feels great when I can do it. When I can’t I don’t beat myself up about it.

Yes and isn’t that if we just allow ourselves to feel what is really going on whether it is inside or around us then it gets more easy to not numb but instead to feel. We can of course eat a bit but “the battle” becomes more easy when we first feel and then eat if it is still needed. We dont have to be hard on ourselves.

Yes Bernadette, I had many other things that became ‘my chocolate’ as I wasn’t a chocolate lover either. Smoking, alcohol, relationships, sex to name a few. Anything that kept me distracted or numb to what was really going on. Being honest with myself was the first step in understanding and uncovering the deeper lying hurt. I love how you’ve said your reactions are your new marker.

I agree Rod. It’s lovely to read of and feel Nathalie’s evolution from someone who had a very strong addiction to numbing herself to a beautiful woman reclaiming herself and bringing her understanding of this process for many others to understand where their own addictions might be.

Yes – the Evolutionary diet = loving choices, not willpower or drive.
It’s interesting that we use ‘motivation’, and ‘force’ to ‘try and get somewhere’… only to find that love is the only thing that will bring about true change… and, evolution.

What a revelation to me Nathalie Sterk, that chocolate wil never “fill up the void or drown out the sadness of childhood experiences”. I have never looked at it that way but when I look back I have to agree with you that I too ate chocolate for soothing the pain I felt from my childhood. I have stopped eating chocolate for many years now, but I can feel that when the sadness of the childhood experiences come up that there is a tendency to take it away with food, sweet food in particular. This is now a great reminder for me to consider to look deeper into what is behind the reason I am looking for sweets and to search for healing of the underlying hurts.

I can also remember turning to chocolate to soothe the pain. And yet at the time there wasn’t the awareness that I have now of why I would want the sugar, the dairy and the caffeine. The sugar would give me an energy hit when I was feeling tired, the dairy soothed anything I hadn’t dealt with from my childhood that would come up to be felt and the caffeine but my body into a raciness which was another way I could avoid feeling. Part of me always knew chocolate wasn’t good for me, yet time and time again I would reach for it, obviously knowing that it was a quick fix to mask how I was feeling.

Agree with you Vicky, the chocolate was something I also once loved and consumed, and as you say it was a type of food that served very well to numb what was being felt, and to soothe discontent, hurt or dissatisfaction. I’ve realised from experience that although I no longer eat sugar, caffeine, or dairy that even another type of food can still be used as a replacement – even if it’s healthy, like fruit or lettuce! The key then is understanding the relationship we have with ourselves, and this in regards the relationship we have with food. Food then is directly linked to our personal evolving.

Yes, Vicky I also had the knowing that chocolate was not good for me, but I ignored that fact because the comfort it offered for all the reasons you describe. I was also soothed by the texture and the sensation of melting in my mouth, which must be like the comfort babies have when sucking on a dummy! It was an immediate quick fix to my unsettled emotions. As these emotions were constant so too was my need to fix them with an addiction to eat chocolate. The amazing thing is that by dealing with my emotions the need for chocolate just melted away. (Pun intended!)

I used to love chocolate and as when I grew older I prefered it pure and even sometimes at 90% and sugar free I told myself it was even healthy to have. I never considered the amount of cefeïne in chocolate and never stopped to feel if it was what my body wanted. The moment of pure enjoyment of the taste would make the whole world melt away as the chocolate melted in my mouth. I now can see how this was my way of not wanting to feel whatever was hurting or uncomfortable. The funny things is, I tried some chocolate after a couple of years of not having it and to my surprise i did not like the taste at all!

Soothing away the pain in seconds as we eat it and wrapping our hurts up in a big ball of comfort so that we do not have to feel what is there for a very long time. And if by chance we do feel something then we just reach for the next chocolate fix.

…and sooner or later those hurts emerge out from under the comfort blanket we have placed on top – and make their presence known to us once more … do we continue the endless attempt to silence the voices inside that can never be dulled or silenced – or take a moment to listen and observe the ‘hurt’ dissipate – no chocolate required…

I can really relate to using dairy foods to soothe – yet from a very young age my body clearly didn’t like them. I wonder what the impact of giving children milk at school is – if that still happens? I know we used to be given milk every day at school but that was ‘a few’ years ago now. My feeling is we will at some point recognise that dairy foods do not sit well with our bodies – if we have not reached that point already.

I feel I ate chocolate to not feel what was going on, wrap myself in comfort where I didn’t have to take action and be pro-active in life, for the sweetness because I wasn’t feeling the true sweetness in life just a lot of emptiness and sadness and not truly stopping to acknowledge this. Feeling this now, yes, it was eaten so I didn’t have to deal with anything in life. Even though I no longer eat chocolate (which is big for me because I loved it) I still see how I use certain other foods so I can stay in comfort; and from knowing how debilitating it is staying in comfort how this is not a great or loving thing to do.

I can relate to every word you say here Vicky. I have become more and more aware of how I am eating for every reason under the sun except for the true nourishment of the body – I have very often eaten for the sake of an enjoyable experience, a real reward in the day. And I have definitely eaten to numb a situation where someone hurts me or I find myself reacting. Food ought not be a band-aid or drug, but rather true medicinal support for our precious body.

I agree Vicky, Lyndy and others. It raises an interesting question for me – why are we not taught from an early age, or educated in our schooling about the true value and purpose of food – to deeply nourish the body. In our world today it feels totally out of hand the way we use and eat food – as though there is no true foundation about food that has been set. Of course we are choosing it to be this way – but it is interesting to feel how we are globally with food. As we know and may have been said here – animals would never treat food in the way we do.

Nourish the body is the key words here for me Jane. We tend to use food not for our bodies but to satisfy our taste buds, feel good. and satisfy the hunger pains. In the past the only way I connected with my body was when I had over eaten and felt sick then it was too late as I had already done the damage to my body.

Richard Mills says:August 22, 2015 at 3:42 pm

I have wondered whether I used the sweetness of foods like chocolate to counteract the bitterness I felt inside. I didn’t want to accept that I felt bitter and needed something to dull my awareness of the fact. Chocolate was certainly something I chose to have on a daily basis and I now recognise that it wasn’t a healthy thing to do and it was in truth a way of burying what I was truly feeling within.

When a childhood hurt comes up it is not only chocolate that I have gone for in the past, although not being a big chocolate eater, I tend to have reached for chips, nuts, lollies, corn crips .. anything really … anything to avoid feeling the hurt.

Hi Nathalie and Nico, I liked sugary things too, liquorice mainly but for me it was salted peanuts and then roasted cashews in big quantities, I was addicted to salty foods, filing up that hurt empty space inside me that was actually bottomless and would never be filled in that way. Salt feels to me to be very similar to sugar in its effects on my body. I would sprinkle it literally on everything else I ate as well.
Finally letting myself feel and see where I had held onto things that hurt me as a child and then where they were being triggered in my adult life (becoming aware and honest) and not being hard on myself when I slipped has led to no longer craving salt or sugar either. I dont have a vast empty space inside me now and it is amazing how naturally sweet or salty food actually is now that I can taste it with absolute clarity. I found it is so worth looking at the ‘why” I needed something to numb and bury.

Nathalie, thank you for your honest account of how you kicked your chocolate addiction. I know exactly that it is like to be hooked on chocolate. Mine started when I was a teenager, I used to go to the local shop and buy 3 or 4 chocolate bars and eat them all at once. This carried on into the adult life and it always became worse when I was going through an emotional or stressful time, and when there was some anxiety in my life. I no longer have a chocolate craving thanks to Universal Medicine, and I know that if I have the slighted craving for something sweet that there is something going on that I should look at and deal with in myself. It just goes to show that an addiction cannot be healed by willpower but by being honest with ourselves and dealing with our hurts.

Beautiful to read Nathalie and it reminded me of my own chocolate addiction. I would eat a whole block and could not stop until it was all eaten! I relate to the feeling of wanting to stop but then, always coming back to it like I did not have any control over it. In some way I did not need it anymore at some point in my life and it feels it has to do with what you share here: “The actual journey of ‘giving up chocolate and sweets’ however took many years, going through a lot of trial and error, because it all came from a need to ‘fix’ the problem rather than from choosing a genuine and loving care for myself and my wellbeing.” I started to develop a genuine loving care for myself and this made it easy to not eat chocolate at some stage. I remember first not eating milk chocolate and only pure without dairy, and after that no chocolate at all. It is truly amazing to feel how easy it is to stop an unhealthy and unloving behaviour, like eating chocolate, by loving myself instead of using willpower which in my experience does not work on a long time basis.

I can definitely relate to having an addiction to food. Not particularly any sweets or anything in particular, but just food. I can now recognise when I suddenly feel like I need to eat that it may not really be hunger and to check in to my body and realise what is really going on. I am also more and more aware that it really doesn’t make a difference for me what it is that I am eating, if I am eating it to numb out, I can do that with any food.

Thank you for sharing this Nathalie. I too had a craving for sweets and chocolate but never admitted to myself that this was an addiction. An addiction to sugar used as a prop to comfort the deep sadness I felt inside me but didn’t understand. Listening to presentations by Serge Benhayon and healing sessions with Universal Medicine practitioners has enabled me to look at the underlying cause of the sadness and to realise that my emotions are not who I am. Now I no longer have a craving for chocolate and sweets and find a natural sweetness in foods that I had never tasted before.

Great point Mary, that ” my emotions are not who I am”. So often we are coerced or manipulated into thinking that they are, from that it makes sense that we try to disguise and comfort the pain and sadness that we feel. When the distinction can be made, known and felt for oneself, the choices we make become very different indeed.

Well said Mary, ‘ I too had a craving for sweets and chocolate but never admitted to myself that this was an addiction. An addiction to sugar used as a prop to comfort the deep sadness I felt inside me but didn’t understand’, as a child and young woman I was very addicted to sweets and cakes and put on a lot of weight and I remember feeling very heavy and dull, it makes complete sense to me that I was eating these to comfort my deep sadness.

It is remarkable how naturally sweet many foods are, as you say Mary, that I also never realised before I gave up sugar. It was an addiction for me too, and although I loved chocolate, what I loved most of all was a piece of cake in the afternoon with a cup of tea! Something my mother always used to give us as children and old habits die hard. But now, with no sugar in my diet because I also no longer have the emotions that need to be filled with a substitute for me, I no longer have that craving. Thankyou Nathalie for sharing your experience.

Thanks Mary, I can definitely relate to finding “a natural sweetness in foods that i had never tasted before” now refined sugar is not longer dampening my tastebuds. I never would have guessed that celery could taste sweet!!

Mary my second name was sugar because I ate so much of it in every variation. I too was never admitting that this was an addiction. How could I be so blind? All symptoms of addiction were there: the need to know that there is something sweet at home, if not getting nervous, if there was a craving for eating chocolate and there was no getting grumpy and my mind was always turning around chocolate most of the time. It is indescribable that we are living in such an illusion that sugar or chocolate can heal the hurts we have deep inside of us.

Thanks Natalie for this very honest sharing, you are so right no amount of chocolate , sweets or anything else like alcohol can ever fill the void or heal the hurts. I was always more of a savoury person than having a sweet tooth but I did binge on chocolate and sweets from time to time. Now that my body is not so numbed to the effects of sugary things I am totally amazed at how evil sugar actually is and the effect it does have on us. It really is just another harmful drug that is very damaging.

Yes Kevin, I recently indulged in some sweet foods over a period of a few days and found I couldn’t think clearly for the following week. It was quite alarming as I don’t eat much sweet foods anymore and it was clear how the sugar was affecting me. It did feel quite evil.

That’s so true Kevin.. it’s like we all find our comfort food or substance that we go to, to numb out or not feel. Regardless of what that food is, they are all achieving the result of taking us away from ourselves and hence they are all as bad as each other…. whether that is a sugar addiction, drug or alcohol addiction, entertainment addiction or more!

Haha yes I find this too Kevin. Over the last year or so I’ve been working on reducing the amount of salt in my diet, and the other day a friend was commenting on how bland the fishcakes she had just made were, I tasted them and found them super salty! Just from the garlic in them.. It is amazing how in the past I had no idea the amount of salt I was eating!

I have never had a fling with chocolate but I do have with other foods (nuts/peanuts) and like you say, it is an addiction. Sometimes I can feel like a junk. Where they need their drug or alcohol, I need my certain kind of food. In the end, it’s all the same. I use it to numb myself, to not feel and even to make myself feel less great. Like you, it takes time to let those foods go and we can only let them go, when we have an honest look in why we eat them in the first place.

We are all missing that one ingredient called love. Having been around the block when it comes to other healing modalities. I have found the level of integrity and the dedication of the staff is what makes Universal Medicine stand out from all the other healing practices out there. And that is why people seek out Universal Medicine and interestingly most find out about the company by word of mouth so no huge sales pitch happening here.

Hi Mariette, I too have never really had a problem with chocolate. I could never eat more than one or two at a time, or I used to feel yuk! Oh, just realised this moment, it could partly have been the milk in them. ( I never realised I had an intolerance to milk until the last few years) . But my weakness also has been nuts, and also potato chips etc., the savoury end of the spectrum. I used to find that the saltiness in these was what I craved whenever I was feeling ‘out of sorts’ from something going on in my life. This has been the hard one to get right out of my life. But the realisation that this mainly happened when I lost my connection with myself for some reason, has helped me just about get these things out of my life. I don’t usually have salt at all in my eating programme, but very occasionally, still indulge a little. It is ridiculous, I always feel absolutely awful in my body afterwards. I obviously also use salty things to numb my body, something I very seldom feel to do now. Actually I can feel it is something that is now moving to completion. No more salty foods!

It’s a great point you make here Mariette, that we all have our addictions, our drugs we reach for in order to numb a pain that we do not want to feel, to take the edge off life, or make ourselves feel a little less than amazing. For some it may be chocolate, or any other food, for others it may be watching tv, or internet shopping… It does not matter what we choose (one is no better than the other) – the energy behind the behaviour is the same. For me changing these behaviours is an ongoing process of allowing myself the space to feel what is going on, rather than immediately reach for something to push that feeling down. I do not have to have an answer, or be able to “fix” what has caused the feeling, at this stage for me it is simply allowing myself to feel and accept what I am feeling.

Thank you Natalie for this honest sharing of your addiction to sugar which I really relate to as I am sure many others do also. Sweets and sugar have always been a staple part of my life and what I thought was a reward, a gift and a treat for my self. As from early childhood my mother would buy my sisters and myself bags of sweets for long car journeys and as everyday treats to keep us happy! This became a life long pattern and way of living which I thought gave me energy to keep going and filled me up with sweetness but was really to avoid feeling what was really there to be felt that I did not like. I became quite ill from the the effects of sugar and this racey way of living and would try and give up but this felt like a denial and punishment. It has been from the truth of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon that I am finally being able to give up sugar, feel its harm in my body and choose lovingly not to have it and see the effects I no longer choose to live with. This also comes from building a more loving way of being and working on my hurts from my childhood and life also. Like you it is through true Esoteric healing that I am able to break this life long pattern and recognise what is happening and going on when I do, to look at this and it becomes a great healing gift.

Nathalie, I love the journey you have made and how chocolate played a part in this, how you have learnt so much value for yourself from rising out of what chocolate was offering you as a substitute for love. I can relate to this as I used to do this as well. In fact, just yesterday I was appreciating how much I have changed my diet and how fantastic I feel as a result ~ so much more steady and with loads more energy to be able to live each day with vitality.

“I am a grown woman, and what has brought life-changing outcomes has been to take deep care of myself and understand that I am entirely responsible for my own choices” Nathalie, I love what you write here. Through bringing a true awareness and honesty to how you are living you have been able to deal with something that you have battled with all of your life. This is totally inspiring and shows the importance and benefits of taking self responsibility.

Thank you for sharing your journey with giving up chocolate Nathalie and how your choices to heal your hurts removed the need for numbing. Recognising what I was doing and starting to make different choices has been key for me in changing my eating habits and I now feel much clearer that even when I do choose to eat something so as not to feel it is an opportunity to look beneath and be honest about what I am avoiding.

I find that I too eat many things that are not ‘good’ for me and take me away from feeling the loveliness within myself. Chocolate was never really a hook for me but I would also eat salty chips that would spike me up and salt I find stimulates me and makes me run on a pace that is not natural to my body.

Natasha I can relate to the same, I use to use salt a lot and spicy foods to create numbness. I also use to find my self indulging in these food and then my body would be so racy. We all have had different things we use to avoid feeling and numbing ourselves.

Often we handle this ‘need for numbing’ by finding something to make ourselves feel better. It could start off with being alcohol or drugs, but turn into chocolate – which although we may think is a ‘better’ alternative, it’s actually the exact same thing. What not many people do, is look at WHY we need numbing in the first place… This is what’s so great about Nathalie’s blog!

This is a great article and something I can really relate to, I too used sugar as my way of not feeling and dealing with hurts and so I would be forever looking for my next sugar hit. And I ran my body in this way for many years. Stopping the sugar was a huge process for me also and I am super surprised on how little (natural sugar) the body actually needs. However I feel as though I have my life back in many ways and I am now able to simply work on my connection to me and my true JOY without the illusion of the false high that the sugar was generating.

I like how you say Amina, that you feel like you have your life back, since I have stopped most sugars in my diet, I too feel the same. More honestly , I feel the life I have now, was not at all possible when I was over eating sugar.

I would agree Leigh and Amina, I lived a half life when I ate chocolate and other stimulating foods, the more awareness I came to, the more the reactions I would have to such food and the less engaged in life I was able to be. I remember eating dark chocolate and latterly even one tiny block would be like switching off a light in my head, totally transforming my mood and brightness to a spaced out disengaged state. It was incredible to feel the change this substance made to my wellbeing, and it was this awareness of the change that eventually stopped me making this choice.

Yes Stephen I have noticed that the less sugar I consume, the more connected to my body and clear headed I feel. It’s amazing how sensitive my body is now to certain foods and I can detect the smallest disturbances caused by what I eat.

This is a great blog that is very honest. For some people it is alcohol or cigarettes that they turn to – for you it was sweets and chocolate. I love these words – “I started to make choices that helped me heal the hurts that had forever kept me imprisoned, a victim of my past.” A powerful sentence Nathalie which is the key to true healing.

I never realised that I had much of a problem with eating too much chocolate but looking back at my teenage years, I would eat some on the way to school and back again, along with sweets and crisps. Then at night I would sit in with my father and we would have our favourite crunchy bars, which are loaded with sugar. As I got older and was concerned with my weight and being healthy I would limit myself and believed that going on the dark chocolate was the healthy option. I did cut out a lot of sugar but it was only due to being over weight, otherwise I wouldn’t have even considered it as food has always helped me to numb what I am feeling.
It wasn’t until I came to the workshops run by Universal Medicine, that I started to look at the relationship I had developed with food and realised I was using it as a crutch to get through life.

I too have seen the idea that limiting chocolate and sweets, or eating a lot of dark chocolate, makes it okay. The problem I have seen with that, especially rationing yourself, is that when something goes wrong, you feel sad or their is a special occasion or excuse, people go all out and eat loads, using the ‘I don’t eat very much normally’ as an excuse – but in reality is that helping?

A beautiful blog Natalie and one I can relate to. I once loved chocolate, but made a choice to remove it from my life many years ago, without much drama. But because I didn’t explore the root cause of my chocolate cravings I clung on to something else, nuts. Snacking on nuts between meals is a choice I’m making to numb myself rather than surrender to love. Seeing the pattern, is a gift and an invitation to fully accept and receive love in my body.

Nathalie thank you for sharing, this highlights for me how i also have used sugar to comfort myself, i have always been allowed Sweets and Chocolate from an early age it was a way keeping 4 rowdy boys quiet if for only 10 min.
Looking back i can see how i became dependent on it from childhood and how it became my best and at times secretive friend. This has only started to ease now. as i work on letting go and allowing myself to truly feel the hurt and often emptiness i allowed the sugar to numb inside me.

Wow, Andrew. Many of us I’m sure can relate — and I pondered as i read your comment — that’s exactly how so many chocolate bars are marketed. As the sweet little package we can tuck away, in the knowing that it’s there when we need it, to share ourselves with, the same way that we might long to share and open up with another. The marketing around chocolate feeds on the emptiness society is living in, a loneliness that is brought about by lack of connection with self, and then with others. And the consequence as well as increasing health problems is and ever deepening loneliness and lack of connection.

I can so relate Nathalie the many years I spent on a emotional roller coaster with my sugar ups and downs. I used to wake up in the morning and the first thing I would think about is where I would get my next sugar hit! It is so crazy that this highly addictive poisonous substance is considered normal, thankfully there is a bit more awareness of the truth of what sugar does now but as a society we still have a long way to go.

I can relate to being on a roller coaster with my sugar cravings. The thing is the satisfaction is only ever temporary, and the reasons behind the cravings don’t go away unless they are dealt with. The chocolate is just a band aid, that plays havoc with the chemistry of your body.

Thank you for sharing your experience of giving up chocolate. I have until recently had a very sweet tooth, consuming huge amounts of sugar, what you have written here is very true, ‘no amount of chocolate can ever fill up the void or drown out the sadness of childhood experiences’, it is the last five years that I have started dealing with issues and allowing myself to feel the sadness from my childhood instead of eating chocolate and sweets to not feel it. i notice now that if I feel sad or if something has happened in my day and i feel upset that i can eat and eat and it does not make the sadness go away, that it is much better and easier to allow myself to feel what has happened, to deal with it, talk about it and reflect on it.

Nathalie reading your blog it came to me just how much I’ve tried to use “will power” to stop doing something and control how I am around a certain topic (be it what food I may eat, how much TV I am watch, how I talk to people etc.) but the reality is that until the hurts that are driving that behaviour are looked at and healed then there is no true change. For me I found with chocolate it was not in the end that I gave it up it was that it no longer was something i felt to eat. Now and again I will look at a chocolate brownie or other things and want to eat it as they do look and smell delicious but the after taste in my mouth and body is not so great so I am free to make a choice.

I have a similar experience to you David. Now when I crave something sweet, I will take a moment to examine how I am feeling and what might be behind that craving. I might be hungry, but it could also be that I’m feeling stressed and want a food associated with being comforted. Because I have not eaten very sweet things for a while now, I am sensitive to how sugar feels in my body, and its not pleasant, so I give myself time to consider what else I could do in that moment to support myself.

These things that we ‘cannot live without’ often I have found come with this ‘the world will end’, ‘there is no picture in my mind of what living without X,Y,Z would look like’ and because there is no picture there is this ‘avoiding the unknown’ panic that has at times overtaken me. Plus the ‘I can’t live without it’ as if I am lesser and smaller without it. But is that not just our childhood playing out on repeat? at that point in time I was made to feel smaller and those comforts be it food, distractions, day dreaming, gaming etc where what I saw at the time to ease the pain and confusion. But like you say Nathalie I’m now a grown woman and I too have found that with the support of esoteric practitioners I understand that I need not repeat those behaviours because those triggers of behaviours and those hurts can be addressed in another way that we were not presented with back then. With this understanding our hurts no longer rule our lives.

I was a sweet fanatic too Natalie and so I can very much relate to the yo yo affect of trying to give up. Chocolate and sweets were my reward for the long day at work or when I was bored. It was a habit and an addiction and my skin would keep telling me that sugar was not good for me but the draw to eat chocolate and biscuits had become a normal part of my day and I didn’t put on serious amounts of weight so I was able to carry on. Learning to listen to my body has allowed me to feel what sugar and chocolate do to my body, the raceyness is uncomfortable in my body and where as before I would go into the doing and the drive to not feel this I now accept that this is what sugar does to me and I no longer want to feel this way. If I have sugar now I loose the clarity of thought almost immediately and the feeling in my body is so horrible that it is not worth the taste sensation that lasts a few moments compared with the raciness that lingers far longer.

Realizing and honestly accepting that all that happens and has happened in our lives is because of our own choices is a big step. It will allow us to not only try to fix the symptoms and what is on the surface, but look at what is underneath that causes the actions and choices in the first place. When we work on the root cause, we can truly and lovingly heal.

Truly said Michael. And specifically our willingness to look at the hurts we have sustained and kept carrying really helps enormously with the level of honesty and observation we are capable of. The chocolate corporations will be out of business when we do this. For some reason it is reminding me of the day when we all stop buying the newspapers that originate from the gutter press.

Great comparison here Natalie between chocolate and alcohol. We tend to not think of sugar and chocolate as being an addiction in the same way as something like alcohol but this blog shows that it is no different and the causes and consequences are possibly the same.

Very true Andrew. A recent study actually showed that Oreo biscuits activate significantly more neurones in a rat’s brain than cocaine or morphine… This has got scientists around the world questioning which substance is actually more addictive, and it’s quite shocking to think of the affects this could be and is having on humanity without them knowing it. Chocolate could be more dangerous than we think!

Thanks for this great piece of information about Oreo biscuits Susie. The sugar here is also going to be a key factor. in addiction. It is so interesting how the finger about ‘addiction’ gets pointed at certain substances like morphine, but omits to look at the effect of chocolate biscuits. It is as if the finger that points has to keep its own comforts available and act as if they are harmless so it directs attention to something else obviously ‘bad’ and shouts loudly about it as a smoke screen. Because most of us are still hanging on so tightly to those buried hurts and don’t want to go there and open them up to the healing light of day, the consumption of harmful substances to numb continues to operate unabated.

Nathalie, this is a timely article for me as I too have struggled with an addiction to sweets, despite the fact that now more than ever these types of foods do have such an effect on me – raciness being a big one. I can feel how really getting to what lies underneath these addictions and actually choosing to be loving towards self is a big part in the healing process. I also feel being truly honest with self is key and I know for me it is those times when I want to turn a blind-eye to what is there to be felt rather than feeling what is coming up for me, are the times when I can go off the rails the most. Thank you for sharing your experience, it has me feeling and really acknowledging that it is time to let the true sweetness of me out.

I guess the title of this blog is not right. You did not give up chocolate – you embraced love. You started to no longer give up on you. For me you did and do not give up anything – you accept who you are, feel your fullness. And as a result you do not need anything to fill gaps. Well done.

That’s very honest and I can relate to the feeling of not wanting to feel what is around me, not being met by others – and therefore numbing or calming the result tension in the body with sweets. But same as you – it’s in the front row “helping” – but in truth it doesn’t at all. It separates. And that’s why it feels “good” to have in the first step, because it kills the feeling, the connection. And then the tension is “gone”. I have too made the experience, that the sugar cravings will only appear when the underlying hurt has been dealt with.

I have learned that food can be used in a way to give me a ‘fix’ when I am needing comfort, feeling sad, overwhelmed, exhausted or uncomfortable about a choice I have just made. The trouble is the ‘fix’ only works for the shortest of time, numbing me to what is going on and the situation or feeling is left undealt with, only to come back again, often in a deeper form. Choosing to say no to having this relationship with food has been such a loving thing to do and each time I say no it gives me an opportunity to look at what is going on behind that craving.

Natalie what you have discovered as being the key to giving up chocolate is the key to stopping all unwanted behaviours and that is to not try to bring them.to an arrest but to build love in the body by making more loving choices and unwanted behaviours simply drop away.

Well said Diana, It is exactly this that I would experience and it really helps when changing to a more healthy way of eating! it’s not about carbs or calories etc etc it’s all about how it feels inside my body.

I also used to be a great chocoholic and could never even think of one day where I wouldn’t have some chocolate. I could give up alcohol much easier than I could give up chocolate when I attempted to stop eating it, down the will power route. What I hadn’t seen was how I was needing comfort every day from the daily choices I was making. I didn’t want to know that when I first heard it, but my body knew. And once I accepted that, I didn’t need chocolate anymore. The thought of it now can make me feel a little nauseous. That feels an incredible turnaround, thanks to Universal Medicine.

Amazing to hear how you went from being so attached to the comfort and safety-net of chocolate for a long time, but when you actually started looking at the issue that came BEFORE the chocolate and addressed what was happening even before you took the first step towards the cupboard it was much much easier to let go of and stop the habit.

Such deep honesty and personal awareness in your blog. Everybody has something that they use to ‘fill up the void or drown out the sadness of childhood experiences’ and chocolate is erroneously seen as a socially acceptable ‘you-just-need-willpower’ substance in the scheme of things. But what you highlight is that it doesn’t matter what your ‘ruin’ is, the compulsion or urge to ‘use’ it still comes from the same need to numb the pain or fill the emptiness and brings the same erratic behaviours and aftermath self-loathing and reproach as some of the more hard-core alternatives. Thank you for bringing to light the true debilitation of chocolate in addiction – and your own route out of it.

A great and very familiar sharing Natalie. As I made a choice to stop eating chocolate I relaised that the times I would reach for it and miss it most were the times that I was feeling something uncomfortable or something had happened and I was looking for some kind of soother to off set what I was feeling. As I have been choosing to feel with more honesty and address what I am feeling the cravings have dispersed as I see them for what they truly are. (Which was a distraction from what I was feeling.) I now more readily make the choice to feel it all and experience what is there to be felt and bring more honesty to what I feel instead of dulling it down with food. This in itself is super liberating and empowering to feel that I am not controlled by the food and the cravings I may have for it. A loving choice to feel.

I loved chocolate – the dairy, the sugar, the bitterness of cocoa, the soothing, the smoothness, the melting. Pretty much all of it. As I became more aware of what chocolate does to my body, I reduced it, switched to non-dairy, then non-dairy, non-sugar chocolate but eventually I looked at chocolate and my body showed me very clearly how it felt about chocolate – a bit like getting a moderate fist in the guts.

At that moment it stopped being worth it and I stopped. A few years later, the psychological addiction went as well.

I could very heavily numb myself and start eating chocolate again but that would be very violent towards myself and that makes no sense, so why do it?

Wow Nathalie, thank you for your amazing unfolding experience in this blog – I could relate to much of what you expressed. I remember very clearly the ‘need’ for my day, that hour, a minute even to be sweetened – and I never equated it to the deep hollow feeling of ‘not measuring up’ and the illusion of the belief that the only way was to fill that need with sweets of some description, and despite my belief that it was just my cultural heritage, my build, my hormones, my this or my that that caused the excess weight in stones, pounds or kilograms to multiply, deep down I secretly knew there had to be a yet to be revealed root cause and issue behind the addiction to refined sugar in all its’ garish techno-colour and design.
I too have found that since I have become a student of the Way of the Livingness and expanded my understanding of the deeper issues behind my excess sugar intake that the extra baggage is naturally and gently being dissolved.

This is a great point Roberta. How many excuses, and ‘rational reasons’ do we come up with for carrying excess weight? All to avoid the deeper cause that we are not wanting to deal with.
It’s no surprise that when we are willing to go there – all the way, and address the cause of our emptiness that fuels the desire to numb ourselves with food, our bodies naturally take on their true shape.

Chocolate was so hard to give up. But want to ask something, why would we even want to give up chocolate in the first place? maybe because we know that it isn’t actually good for us, and leaves us wanting more and more like a drug. I wasn’t just a chocoholic I was a lot of things-aholic. I also feel so much better in myself and don’t crave chocolate one bit. I guess after a while I forgot about it and didn’t need to have it any more.

I actually feel that pretty much everyone ‘knows’ that chocolate isn’t good for their bodies and that’s why fairly recently we have made a ‘thing’ of chocolate. There are chocolate cookbooks, chocolate cafés, chocolate recipes are featured in the same magazines that advocate losing weight, chocolate at least the smell is even in cosmetics and perfumes, chocolate it seems is everywhere and it’s got a kind of naughty-but-nice tag – live dangerously eat chocolate. A bit of a conspiracy really, aimed at keeping everyone in it together consuming something they know doesn’t really feel quite right in the body. And really it’s anything but naughty or nice, in fact it is a poison in the body and the body would never eat chocolate left to its own devices.

This is so true Josephine. I am subscribed to various wholefood blogs and it seems that cacao is now the latest craze, being promoted as healthy and put into everything from smoothies, cakes, cookies, drinks and more. All the ‘natural’ muesli bars in the health food store, service stations and supermarkets. In the all the raw food cafes in the predominant ingredient, so when looking for refined sugar free treats, one is met with no choice but to eat cacao.
It keeps one racy, blissed out and in a hardness, disconnected from the loving clarity that we naturally are and always seeking the next high. It does seem like there is an energy feeding this consciousness to keep us in separation from ourselves and from each other.

People Love the newest thing and the Buzzwords. Here are the list of “healthfood” buzzwords “Cacao, MACA, Acai, Superfood etc” They are void of developing a relationship with your body. The way they are sold and marketed not for health but for money.

Interesting isn’t it. This is the latest trend in the fashionable food industry, that is in fact about anything but deeply nourishing the body, and is all about what can be touted as a ‘super food’, the next ‘thing’, THE health food we must have, or a miracle food – which in fact is all to stimulate our minds into thinking we are improving our diets and way of eating, but never asks us to feel more deeply into the effect of food on our bodies and to evolve our food choices.

Yes, the marketing messages around the expensive chocolate and raw cacao industry are very powerful. They justify us choosing to eat chocolate as they sell the health benefits, antioxidants, nutrients and brand it a superfood. However you get the same raciness from eating raw chocolate as you do the cheap stuff, perhaps more as often the caffeine content is higher. It’s why the best marker is always how you feel in your body as the temptation is always there to believe the marketing hype to indulge in a food that does often taste delicious in the mouth, but is total anguish for the body.

Thank you Nathalie what a valuable story this is as it highlights how there is more at play than eating sweets and chocolate just for their taste. Both are addictive as you have shown and it is necessary to get to what it is within us that is driving this choice and then addressing this. So often we think it is just a case of ‘stopping’ or ‘giving it up’ and this can work but as you have shared this does not always last or we just find something else to replace the ‘stopped’ behaviour with. I know I did this when I gave up smoking, I then started ‘snacking’ on foods more. You show in the blog how it takes honesty and a care for yourself to say ‘enough’ and really look at what is going on. This is inspiring.

Thank you, Natalie, your closing line really encapsulates the important message of this honest sharing – “to take deep care of myself and understand that I am entirely responsible for my own choices.” I too have indulged in chocolate eating for most of my life, to numb myself from the hurts I did not want to face. I now also realise that there is nothing we crave more than the warm glow inside of love and deep care for ourselves.

“What I really craved was to be truly met and deeply loved.” I recognise this Nathalie. My sweet and chocolate craving began in boarding school , when really I wanted my parents, but chocolate became the substitute. Thanks for a great post. Finding the cause as to why we have habit enables us to heal the hurt, rather than just going cold turkey – yet still craving the substance.

Nathalie I have always had a sweet tooth , but I have slipped back to eating between meals, this is when the sweets come into play. I need to be honest with myself about why I still fall back into these old habits, ask a few questions of myself and observe when and why I do this. Thank you for the inspiration.

Great article Nathalie – it resonates with me too. I was a chocoholic – I couldnt go a day without chocolate (I didn’t eat sweets as such) – and some days I needed more chocolate than other days to get me through the day. At Christmas or Easter I would buy chocolates as presents (and easter eggs) and eat them all and then have to buy them again. I could sit down in one sitting and eat a whole box of chocolates. One Christmas I had been eating lots of chocolate and I felt really down a few days later – so down and depressed I started to experiment – was the chocolate the ‘highs’ and then when I had a few days without chocolate (or without so much chocolate) was I getting ‘lows’ and I found I was – and that without chocolate I felt low – really low. That worried me so I started to look at why I needed the chocolate – and like you over time I started to realise a lot about my relationship with chocolate. Chocolate was my reward, my compensation in life, my ‘reliable friend’, my ‘pick me up’, my ‘fix’ to keep me going when I was tired or exhausted, and my comfort when I felt sad or emotional – it was a crutch. As I started to look at my hurts, the way I was living life, and how truly exhausted I was I started to need chocolate less and less until one day I didn’t buy chocolate again. I love what you share here – as with any food/addiction or habit – we can make changes. I too have had the support of esoteric practitioners and feel truly blessed that that support is available too.

I was the same Jane. I would start buying chocolate easter eggs as soon as they came out on the store shelves and eat them. was I getting in practice? A day without chocolate seemed like an impossibility. In fact I recall that there was a period of my life that lasted about 4 years when I would eat a LARGE bag of liquorice bullets every day on my way home from work and eat them until I felt sick.
I completely relate to that cycle of eating so much chocolate that, like the remorseful hungover person you vow never again, only to fall over again the next day…

Yes it seems strange to move one’s attention from the cravings and trying to stop using pure will and discipline. However I have found that this strategy is a short term solution, and I need to look at why I crave a moment of sweetness or comfort, or stimulation in my mouth.

Very inspiring Nathalie and an incredibly honest sharing with us all. I am guessing that you are not alone in this journey. I know for sure I have done that and still do at times as well. This line today was a bit of a well-needed ouch! – I would always fall back to being soothed and numbed by chocolate instead of dealing with the hurt inside – check. I have been doing that a bit lately. Thanks for the reminder that there is another way to work with what is truly going on.

I felt the same Sarah. Although, like Nathalie, I’ve dealt with my big addictions (food and others), I find the old impulse creeps back in and instead of say, seeking the comfort of cheesecake, I’m substituting with a healthier-looking nut binge. This is a good one to be aware of! And a sure sign there’s something going on, an underlying tension I’ve yet to acknowledge.

I know this story so well Nathalie. Huge amounts of chocolate used to be consumed on a daily basis, often being stored where no-one else would find it! If I had taken shares out in the particular brands of chocolate I really ‘loved’ I would have probably have owned the company by now.
Not a pretty picture though – every mouth-full of chocolate just incited the craving for more, and more was never enough as my body just got more racy and exhausted.
I hold the deepest respect and appreciation for Serge Benhayon and the esoteric practitioners who have inspired and supported me to find my way out of this chocolate maze-mess and deal with the underlying hurts and emotions covered over by the chocolate addiction.
Occasionally when I see or smell chocolate going through a shop, there can be a feeling of wanting a piece – but if put into my mouth it instantly feels so awful – taste and texture cloying in my mouth. My body really loves not eating it any longer!

Thanks so much Nathalie Sterk for this truly amazing blog. I can so relate how I tried to give up alcohol, with very similar attempts, and I was able for some time too, BUT NEVER for good.
I have given many bad habits up for good now. Through esoteric psychology and taking full responsibility for how I feel, and, support of the esoteric modalities I was able to give up smoking, Alcohol, sugar cravings, even entertainment, and very quickly in the scheme of things.
My body – the feelings and awareness it offers is another dimension – the more I feel this the more I commit to choices to cement that feeling in my body.

Rick I love the truth you have written here, that the feeling and awareness offered by our bodies when we do not numb them is another dimension which is priceless, riches indeed, worth so much more than a quick thrill tastewise or otherwise.

You have expressed it so beautifully in this blog, Natalie, it will be very inspiring for all those addicted to chocolate, sugar or any foods and drinks. It is interesting that during the war and then with rationing into the 1950’s, we had very few chocolates and sweets. I remember we had one chocolate bar that was cut up into five pieces for all the members of our family. If cousins were staying we had smaller portions. When rationing finished we all went wild and thought nothing of having a whole chocolate bar to ourselves. It seems that the dearth of chocolates led to the same reaction culturally as it did for you personally when you restricted yourself and then found yourself gorging again. This reveals how the lack of love for ourselves is endemic and influences the behaviour of large groups of people, and then it becomes accepted and normal. You lead the way by choosing and finding the connection with the Love you are first, not chocolate. If just one chooses to live truthfully committed to themselves, then others start to choose too, once they have been shown the way, and the students of Universal Medicine have been shown the way by Serge Benhayon, who lives the Love he is in every breath he takes.

Gorgeous to read this Natalie. I’ve encountered a similar addiction to nut butters that I’ve been breaking down over the past 2 years and I agree no amount of will power has stopped me reaching for a spoon of it when I’m stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, tired or not feeling good enough. Bringing honesty to how I feel in that moment however has, and really getting to feel what is coming up for me to clear or what energy I’ve taken on that I don’t want to feel and therefore numb has been key. This has been super challenging at times as I’ve fought my self in going there and just wanted to go straight to the check out and be fully irresponsible, making it all about me and not about everyone however as I’ve grown to love myself more by caring for myself more, bringing a quality and presence as I shower, in what I eat, the way I lift and carry things etc, I appreciate and honour myself more for the amazing women I know I am and I find that there is no struggle, I simply don’t want to put that in my body anymore because of how horrible it feels and how much I love myself.

Well said, Candida, when we choose to numb ourselves with the usual default pattern of reaching for the chocolate or the nut butter jar, we are making life all about self and not wanting to accept that we are a part of something greater, and that everything we do has consequences, not just on our bodies that get to feel sluggish, heavy or bloated, but on everyone around us who has to live with the ‘drop’, and our choice in that moment to disconnect from love.

Thank you Candida and Janet for taking this one step deeper – from dealing with our own hurts and feelings to the “next level” of accepting the responsibility that our choices and behaviours affect not only ourselves, but everyone around us.

Thank you Janet for spelling out how it is not just ourselves we are abusing by ingesting substances which our body then struggles to deal with but that this behaviour also affects ‘everyone around us who has to live with the ‘drop’, and our choice in that moment to disconnect from love’.

What a great personal story, we are rarely asked to consider the real reasons why we like food such as chocolate, yet it makes sense that there is an underlying emotional hook that makes us turn to the sweet or comforting food. I like you Nathalie battled with chocolate for many years and it has only been recently as I started to take care of myself and had more and more severe reactions to eating chocolate that the choice became easier to give it up.

Thank you for your honesty Nathalie – your experience sounds very familiar to me, although I’ve not been addicted to chocolate (but I completely understand how one could be!) I have had other addictions in the form of food and cigarettes. I kicked the cigarettes a long time ago now, and many would consider that I have a healthy diet, however, I am aware that I tend to eat too much – more than my body needs. At times I allow myself to feel the void and the emptiness that I’m trying to fill by eating when I’m not hungry, and it’s hard to resist the pull of food. It really does feel just like a drug! Your super blog is immensely inspiring and I know that so many people like me will completely relate to what you share.

When we make a choice to heal our past hurts that keep us going round in round in circles, everything changes in our lives. We make one new choice, which then leads to another new choice, with the ripple effect being we continually make true and loving choices that fully nourish and support the body. There is no longer a desire to abuse the body with sugar or other stimulants.

There was a time in my life when I indulged in sweets too, in retrospect it was a time I held onto my emptiness and did not want to deal with it. Sugar helped me to ignore what I was feeling–temporarily, but always left me feeling awful. But what was really awful was my resistance towards my own awareness and love.

Saying you are a chocoholic sounds innocent compared to saying that you are an alcoholic. In truth being a chocoholic is just as serious if not more so because we don’t tend to see the real harm chocolate is doing to us and see it as just a bar of sweetness. We all know on some level the damage alcohol does to ourselves and society, it is very evident. In terms of the actual quality of the life we live, we don’t tend to realise or ask how much damage not questioning why we are addicted to needed the sugar hit in the first place truly is.

This is so beautiful Nathalie, thank you so much for sharing! Our honesty, willingness and commitment to look at our issues, feel them and get the support needed to work through them is so important for our healing. What you have described here so simply is a process so many people go through – whether it be with hot chips, chocolate bars or alcohol. Identifying the underlying reason or emotion underneath why we are choosing to consume these things, that our body clearly does not want or need, is a key part of our healing process. It’s been beautiful to read about yours today Nathalie, and I’m sure it will be inspiration to others too.

Thank you Nathalie for sharing your story. I love how you knew that one day you would not need the chocolate or sweet anymore and that you seemed to accept where you were at at that moment in time. I have not eaten chocolate in a very long time but I do eat foods which contain sugar some periods. I then feel that I am avoiding to feel what is truly going on. I don’t always manage to stop and sit with myself, but I am learning to do this, learning to allow myself to feel whatever is coming up or going on. When I allow myself to stop and feel, it is not a big deal and I can just move on.

Awesome blog Nathalie it is such a great support that you have shared your lived experience. I can so relate to going into a fixing mentality to stop behaviours that don’t support me and how this simply doesn’t have a longterm effect. Choosing to deeply care for myself and build a loving relationship with me has been the truest “fix”in supporting my health and wellbeing.

‘I would always fall back to being soothed and numbed by chocolate instead of dealing with the hurt inside.’ This level of observation is the start to true healing. Rather than reaching for the chocolate we could stop and feel what is really going on. I know that that supported me in letting go of unhealthy eating.
Thank you Natalie for your ‘sweet’ account of what lies beneath the choices that we make.

Well said Kathryn, it is through a true level of observation that we can begin to understand and see our choices from what they really are, begin to understand how these choices makes us feel, and without imposing a exterior image of how we think we should be, begin to make new different choices based on our very well educated body

Great blog Natalie. The cause of my addiction is not speaking up about what is hurting me in my life. The longer I don’t express my hurt the deeper I veil it in my addiction until the addiction becomes worse than the hurt which by then can be buried so deep in my body I might have even have forgotten what hurt me in the first place. We use smoking, alcohol, drugs, sugar, even overeating to numb those hurts.

Thanks for your blog Natalie. When I first read the title I felt nervous, like “What, I don’t think I like the idea of giving up chocolate for good” I almost went into anxiety. Now I am not one who ever ate much chocolate in the first place and I haven’t eaten any for about 4 years because like you I became aware of how racy it made me feel and I would only ever want it as an emotional fixer or just before my period. The thing is, I probably won’t ever eat chocolate again, as I have no need or desire to, but I still find it interesting how my mind responds to the concept of NEVER again. It almost makes me want to hold on and not let go.
I think I will just carry on with just making a choice each time chocolate is presented to me… in fact someone was in front of me two days ago eating a curly wurly and I could smell it and I could remember how it tastes but I didnt want it. Why would I? I feel better with out it.

Rosie, you have just written out the whole exact scenario I had with pizza – ‘What! I will never ever again in this life and all my succeeding lives until the end of time ever have another pizza again’. I can remember finding this so challenging. I can remember a couple of years ago seriously considering having a gluten-free dairy-free pizza (you can get them in the Vanity Fair that is Byron Bay) ,but when I deeply considered what the experience would actually feel like, there was no way I could actually go there. I very easily never ate another chocolate again but walking past a pizza cafe with that tantalising smell can be quite alluring. But nothing would make me compromise my body now that I know what a precious marker it is.

It’s funny how we are all so different. With no oven on my boat even before I started doing the work I only ate pizza’s infrequently and never really enjoyed them because of the feeling of an indigestible lump of flour and cheese in my stomach afterwards, crumbed or worse still battered fish and chips from a fish and chip shop was worse.
Chocolate was different though. We always played a game to see who could make their piece last the longest and you had to show it on the end of your tongue to prove it. The winner got a second piece.
I don’t eat much choclolate but I have bought the odd bar of 90% cacao very dark chocolate, only when it is on special at half price, only twice in as many years. It has no dairy and is quite bitter but the taste, when you let a piece melt on your tongue is amazing.

Nathalie, I can relate to what you have written here and have numbed myself with all sorts of food in the past even with nuts more recently! The only way to deal with these addictions is to heal the hurts inside and I have found that this is an ongoing process for me. At times I still find myself “attaching” to certain foods which I eat for comfort or as a craving rather than truly feeling what my body needs at the time. A great topic to share.

I have found sugar one of the hardest changes to make in my life. I no longer want to eat sugar and other foods that I don’t feel good when I eat, but I take a long time to eventually stop. Alcohol for me also was much easier. It slipped away without me even noticing.

It is great to hear how your relationship with your mum has changed. I can really relate with your addiction to chocolate, mine wasn’t chocolate as much but anything sweet and I would love eating sweets. I have had that yoyo affect with food as well where you have a lot and then say you will never have it again … but a few weeks later ..

It is also great how you share you turned to chocolate and sweets for not being truly met as I feel that is the underlying issue for many addictions. In the end we all want to be met and loved but are we willing to do this for ourselves first?

I used to drink loads of alcohol and knew it was not good for my body but felt I would never be able to give it up completely in my life. After meeting Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine and attending courses, workshops and presentations, after the first few courses alcohol completely fell away from my life without me even making a conscious decision about it. I have not had alcohol for over 9 years now and it feels so good.

Great point you make here Vicky. I have found with things that I no longer consume, its not that I gave it up, Its that I just no longer felt to have it any more. So it was never a will power thing, but more about making different choices about how I was living my life, than then resulted in me not feeling to consume that food or drink anymore.

Thank you Nathalie for sharing what it is like to be addicted to chocolate and sweets. I hardly ate lollies or chocolate growing up but I can definitely relate to using food or the opposite using ‘willpower’ to not eat food to control how I felt. I have found that ‘willpower’ or being hard on myself looking on in judgement of something that I’m doing is bad, has never truly changed or has had lasting effects for my wellbeing. How you have healed this through looking at why and what you were trying not to feel is very inspiring.

Nathalie, I can very much relate to your story and appreciate you sharing it here. I was addicted to sugar and chocolate for similar reasons – to sweet up my life, to take the edge off and numb my feelings. Your experience shows very clearly that ‘trying’ to quit chocolate doesn’t work, and that you have to address the underlying reasons for having it in the first place and to heal those hurts, then there is no need or pull to have the chocolate.

As you say Nathalie addiction to chocolate is no different to any other addiction – all there to keep numbing us from feeling all there is to feel. The moment we choose to feel is the start of true healing. I’ve also had a history of being addicted to chocolate and understand the debilitating effects it has on the mind and body and the mood swings. Sugar in any form is not a part of my life now – something I never thought could happen – but it’s only been as a result of listening to presentations by Serge Benhayon and supporting myself with healing session with esoteric practitioners (as you have done) that I’ve been able to accept and love myself enough that I no longer need or want it.

Nathalie – giving up chocolate is a big one. As a multi billion dollar business that alone says how much we consume chocolate. What is different about your writing is that you share the struggles you have been through with trying to give up (reminds me of when I used to yo-yo diet) but also that it was your unresolved childhood hurts that was seeking the comfort of chocolate. Imagine, if this is the cause as to why so many of us crave chocolate, that’s a lot of people walking around with the pain of not being met in their childhood?!

We are starting to see more and more in the media about the powerful addictive nature of sugar, and yet it is freely available in vast quantities and in most processed and packaged foods. Given that sugar is now being recognised as being more addictive than cocaine, it’s interesting that eating sweets at work is seen as acceptable and normal, whereas drinking alcohol or taking drugs isn’t – despite having similar effects and being used for similar reasons.

‘We are starting to see more and more in the media about the powerful addictive nature of sugar, and yet it is freely available in vast quantities and in most processed and packaged foods.’

You could also add that the medical profession know that alcohol is addictive and kills 3.3 million a year, (1) and yet that too is freely available to all but children.
The things that are ‘normal’ in this world like sugar and alcohol are killing us.
If we look at the illness that are killing us due to sugar alone, we can see that the world-wide deaths from these conditions (2) Let’s add them up:

Obesity: 17 million deaths

Heart disease: 17 million deaths

Diabetes: 4 million deaths

Total: 38 million deaths

We seem to have a problem! But who is going to face up to it and take responsibility for their health, in a world where it seems our mouth often leads us to kill ourselves.

” But who is going to face up to it and take responsibility for their health, in a world where it seems our mouth often leads us to kill ourselves. ” A powerful point Ariana. I know medical professionals who also consume alcohol and sugar, so do not recommend healthy eating to their patients (aside from the fact that the nutritional information given in medical school is insubstantial). It seems no-one takes responsibility for their health seriously – most of us just blame our genes, fate or God.

When I read this post and look at the photo I am amazed to find that the sight and thought of chocolate does nothing for me anymore. Just 5 years ago I was queen of the chocoholics and could devour a family sized block with a packet of tim tams (chocolate biscuits) as a chaser.

I reduced my chocolate consumption significantly for health reasons 4.5 years ago as I knew dairy was making me very sick on a regular basis. And so chocolate went……. until recently when I discovered gluten, sugar and dairy free chocolate. I had a good time with this even though it felt awful in my body and I was using it like an addict for all the same reasons.

I continued this foray until my period arrived and left me feeling as though I would never eat or feel well again and guess what …. all I could taste was chocolate and it tasted anything but good. It was like having a weeklong hangover with no end in sight. I know the truth of chocolate in my body now and like you Nathalie I have no desire to eat it again.

Natalie as a former chocoholic I so can relate to everything you have shared. It was nothing for me to eat a whole family block of chocolate all by myself when I was teenager. This chocolate obsession continued in my adulthood as my guilty pleasure. In the last few years with the support of Universal Medicine, I now have kicked the habit as like you I finally addressed the hurts I was holding from what I had experienced in life. It’s a great market for me now if I ever get a craving for cholocate that there is something that I need to address in my life.

Thanks Nathalie for giving us an insight into the hold sugar can have on one’s life, and how its possible to turn this around through taking responsibility for the choices we make. I love how you write “..so I started to make choices that helped me heal the hurts that had forever kept me imprisoned, a victim of my past.”

Nathalie this is beautifully written and powerful blog… regardless of what the addiction is. I can relate very much to what you write even though my ‘addiction’ was perhaps more moderate. I always knew will power was not the key and it was pointless trying to stop any ‘habit’ without addressing why the need for that habit was. The merry-go-round of stopping, abstaining for a period of time, then falling off the wagon and starting again as you describe is very demoralising and undermining. Those habits of mine fell away once I started healing some of what was underneath, which didn’t happen till I met Serge Benhayon in 2001. Universal Medicine has over subsequent years offered the most helpful insight into this sort of behavioural pattern – something I see affect many people in various ways.

Thank you for your honest sharing here Nathalie. It is interesting how you said ‘because that’s what everybody else did’. This is such a powerful lesson in itself. Imagine if we were taught from young to listen to our bodies and not pay attention to what anybody else did? Would we ever be able to eat chocolate or drink alcohol? I doubt it! By not being taught this, it is so easy to accept that we are meant to live by what we see around us – numb and bury our hurts rather than feel them. Thank goodness for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for offering the teachings that there is another way to live – one that does not involve food as a substitute for love, but teaches us to feel our bodies and develop an honest relationship with food. One where we honour our bodies with only what they need.

Natalie, what a lovely blog. I can feel such an awful sadness in that little girl who needed the chocolate to console her for the lack of her mother’s love. And how sad that this need stayed so strongly with you for so long. It shows us how deeply we feel the lack of a parent’s love when we are young, and the way these hurts stay with us, if we do nothing about it, for all of our lives. It is so obvious the chocolate actually helps to numb that awful pain. I thank God that I was never really drawn to sweet things, I was never all that fond of chocolate, happy to have one or two, but could never indulge in them, I found them too sweet.

For me, it was the savoury things, chips etc., when it came down to it, I guess for me it was salt. Probably using it as a similar numbing device. But it never lasted for long. I was wanting the next chip, peanut butter etc. And yes, my mother also was prone to putting the spoon into the peanut butter when she thought no one was looking. Funny to look back many years later. It is wonderful that you had help to get you ‘off the hook’, with an esoteric healer. I too have found the esoteric healing work has helped me enormously with my self confidence, and as I have learned to nurture myself lovingly I seldom now have the need for the chips etc.

This could be my story also, I had a chocolate addiction for most of my life. I never had a day that I never ate chocolate. I never thought that I would never ever not eat chocolate, But looking into the hurts as you did with esoteric practitioners, I could see and feel the hurts that the chocolate was numbing. You expressed your journey so beautifully. Thank you Nathalie for your blog.

Chocolate and all things sweet were my addiction too. Drugs and alcohol never figured, but like you Natalie the chocolate cravings were daily. As I began to heal my emotional hurts the cravings lessened, but there was still a push pull towards it. At the time though I hated the sensation of the lingering sugary taste that would last in my mouth for 2 days afterwards. I weaned myself off from milk chocolate to dark chocolate which was quite bitter. There came a point where the push away from chocolate came and I remember clearly the last time I ate it. I just stopped wanting it anymore. For me personally that was quite a miracle!

This is relatable for a lot of people Nathalie! I used to be super into my sugars too… Cakes, macaroons, anything nutty, caramel mmm it was the good life – until I realised the affect it was having on my body! Eating things like that made me exhausted, lethargic, get rashes, bloat and get super moody. What I realised was that the 15 seconds yummy ‘mmm’ of tasting it in my mouth was nothing compared to the next few hours (or more!) of intensive care and recovery. I’m still trying to eliminate areas where this pattern plays out – although it’s much less extreme I definitely still do it (eat foods that make me feel awful), but I am getting a lot better.

Thanks for sharing this Natalie. I know for me too that I need to get underneath why I’m eating something that’s not good for me rather than just use will power.. Feeling what’s going on behind the craving helps to take the sting out of it and makes it easier to choose differently.

Willpower only goes so far when we are trying to kick an old habit – it works for a while, but because the underlying causes have not been addressed, it is all too easy to indulge again and even ‘make up’ for the time when we weren’t using whatever substance it is we are addicted to.

I don’t have so much of a craving for chocolate, but icing sugar does it for me – definitely an addiction requiring willpower to say no and that I don’t seem to have. I understand the craving comes with exhaustion so I am checking in with why I am so exhausted. Like you, I know that one day I simply won’t want it any more because of what it does in my body but at the moment the driving cravings are winning. Interestingly, though, as I’ve refined my diet more and more I am feeling more of the effects of everything I eat, which is cool, because eventually I can let my body decide what I need to eat instead of my mind and my taste buds will align to that as well.

I ate chocolate recently and when I went to write how my body felt I realised I could not feel it, like my ovaries or breasts that I tune into to feel normally I can feel a warmth and expansion when I focus my attention yet after eating chocolate nothing, I was numb. Incredible how powerful a drug it is. I am inspired by your sharing of how developing more love an self care was the way out of a vicious cycle of addiction.

Willpower just doesn’t cut it! I’ve tried using willpower to stop myself doing a certain behaviour, be that eating chocolate, baking a cake or even phoning an ex-boyfriend when I knew I shouldn’t, but it never worked for me. There was always a sense underlying the trying that I needed to get to a root cause of why I wanted to do that behaviour in the first place. All I needed to do was first be very honest with myself and trust that I knew the reason why deep down, even if I pretended I didn’t. Great blog Nathalie, this I’m sure will help many people.

We think about chocolate as something sweet and soothing, yummy etc. But it is not like that at all. That’s why I find it so false and hideous. If you first taste it, it tastes sweet, but underneath lies a totally acid layer of taste, bitter and even foul (from the fermentation process), it gets really slimy if you let it be in your mouth a little longer. I prefer poison that looks and tastes like poison. Chocolate is a poison that tastes like paradise… who invented it?

Thanks for sharing Nathalie, I also use to love chocolate, but it is true to say my body didn’t if I am honest. As I have now taken most sugars out of my diet, if I do eat something sweet I can feel an uncomfortable underlying buss and racy feeling. It is revealing to look at our food cravings and when they arise, usually when I do not want to feel the depth of something.

I’m noticing the many ways I have made food an integral part of my life’s experience, along with an ingrained cultural belief that eating and drinking is one of life’s pleasures. So it has been epic to shift the relationship I have had with food. I have found a new relationship and connection to my body that is far more supportive of the simplicity I now live my life.

Nathalie I can relate very much to your blog. I use to love chocolate and could never imagines life without eating it. I would reach for it everyday for the same reasons that you mention here, to sweeten up life. If I was feeling a little down or I needed a little pep me up, chocolate was the answer to all of my problems, however the little high it gave me was very short lived. Once I started dealing with my issues as to why I ate the chocolate, little by little my chocolate eating habit simply dropped away. It’s been over five years since I have eaten chocolate and I must say, I don’t miss it one bit.

Nathalie that’s really awesome. After having a sugar binge I can definetly feel the affects of sugar- the next day my head feels sort of blurry and it’s hard to consentrate. It’s really obvious that sugar is used as a comforter for something I don’t want to feel. It’s quite clear when there’s that ‘ahh’ feeling. Yet it doesn’t last long and the aftermath is often worse then not feeling what’s going on.

Yes I have fallen into the trap of using it in a recipe for the taste and then laid awake for hours not being able to sleep and in my racy head. An excellent way to keep us away from who we truly are and to arrest and delay evolution.

I really could connect to your loneliness in this phrase: ” I felt incredibly lonely because I felt less important to her than her TV and chocolate. I went into my room and cried for not being met or seen just for being me, a beautiful little girl. So, of course, I ate more chocolate. ”

The emptiness is so real when we abuse ourselves with food alcihol drugs and the like! THANKS to universal medicine and Serge Benhayon I am not in that self indulgent and self destructive cycle anymore.

Thanks Nathalie for sharing your story. I have had concerns about what drives me to eat something – I know that I’ve had something to eat when I’m bored and anxious. I don’t have a specific food, pretty much anything will do, but all the better if it’s sweet. My relationship with chocolate was basically all or nothing, I wanted to eat it all in one go, or not have any at all. When I did eat it all I’d feel sick, and the same as you, I’d swear to not do it again…until next time. Learning why I do things like this with food is so important, and liberating to understand and get to the TRUTH of what is really going on.

Thank you Nathalie for your honesty. Our addictions are many and come in various shapes: from chocolate and alcohol to emotional dramas and manipulation. Facing my addictions has sometimes not been pleasant and when I tried using will power, like you, I would end up on a roller coaster of famine or feast, giving myself rewards for being ‘good’ for a couple of days, making up for my abstinence with a feast. Most of my addictions have fallen away by being aware of what I am doing and why I am choosing to cover up past hurts, however, there is still a way to go towards fully loving myself for who I am.

My constant companion was cheese(and crispy treats) – any type, colour size, and shape. I ate enough of the stuff for a large family of four in a week all by myself. Is it not a wonder I had sinus issues, digestive problems felt lethargic and suffered with many headaches etc etc. It was the one thing I turned to when feeling down, sad, lonely – it was a constant, always there sitting in my fridge saying eat me – a complete distraction and numbing food. A cover up job of not dealing with my past hurts. So I can really understand your comfort of consuming chocolate. It amazes me still when we start to truly listen and feel what is right for our body there is such a clarity to what we are doing to it that causes such inner dis-ease. Bringing honesty into our lives and choosing to take the self loving route with the help and support of the Esoteric Practitioners is a great combination. For me gradual changes and the constant tuning in to my body has made a vast difference to my life. So thank you Nathalie for sharing your journey with us.

Well said Marion, I like the way the way you talk about bringing honesty into our lives as I know I have found this to be key in terms of addressing our issues as we all so obviously know what is going for our bodies and it is not even that we are too ignorant to see it, it’s that we are too arrogant to change our choices

Nathalie thank you for sharing. Sugar is a challenging one for many, like you say it is related to deep hurts and when we have not dealt with these hurts we use sugar as a form of comfort so we do not need to feel. I remember as a child I loved sweets more than chocolate and that was the same as I became an adult. I never really ever tried to give up sweets, but as I started to deal with my hurts, the cravings for sweets became less. Now and again when I feel I need sugar, it’s often because I have over pushed myself and my body is feeling exhausted. Still work in progress as the occasional hurt does appear.

I can definitely relate to using sweets and chocolate to sweeten up life, the only thing was that I noticed that I would actually become more negative about myself afterwards which was painful to feel so I would eat some more!

I have spent my life moving from one vice to the other; smoking, drinking, food, relationships and others that have come, gone and forgotten. These were things that were used to numb myself and worked well for most of this life to stop me from feeling anything. I would stop one and replace with another and kept on numbing. My old friend sugar would often fill the gaps. I am now more aware when the dark chocolate tries to pull me and I have to feel why are the feelings/thoughts even there? Even fruit can sneak up on me, a few cherry’s is part of your daily 5…yet a small pint is now a head ache for me.

So beautifully expressed Elizabeth – ‘I have found that the more I love and care for myself , that my addiction to certain foods, emotions and behaviour , just fade away easily and effortlessly’ I absolutely agree. The more I listen to my body, deepen my relationship with myself, deepen my self care, and honour myself during my day the addictions, and emotional behaviours do fade away easily.

its true that sometimes when we know something is not good for us, we will choose not to have it for a few days, and then ‘reward’ ourselves with indulging a few days after.
I have had this yo yo relationship with many things, convincing myself I am not addicted because I can go a few days without – but really it is all the same.
When I am not addicted, the thought does not even cross my mind to have that thing. There is no attraction, and I honour how I feel in my body more than my cravings.
So I love this very honest account of how you have changed your relationship with sugar based on changing your relationship with you.

It is such a great realization to consider that eating chocolate is actually a way to bury our hurts. That puts our “sweet tooth” into a different perspective because avoiding our hurts is actually not very sweet for the body.

Natalie, this is a very needed blog ,because it adresses any formof addiction. And even I I have no sugar addiction I have other addictions. I am touched how lovingly you hold yourself during your process of letting go sugar.

Wow I love this blog because I could relate to every single word. I never used to have a sweet tooth as a child, always leaving easter eggs half eaten. But as I got older and school got more intense and I got more tired, the more I turned to excess sweets and sugar. And I used to justify it because I was eating less sugar than some people. And like you, I have tried many times unsuccessfully to quit sugar, throwing everything away and swearing never again, and then a few days or weeks later, eating sugar again. But like you found, really change has only come about when the choice to stop comes from truly feeling the damage the sugar is having on my body, feeling the deep exhaustion hidden under the sweet tooth. Its still a massive work in progress, but like you, I know one day I will get there and I won’t give up.

Rebecca, you make a great point when you describe that others around you ate more so that justified having the sweet food. That can be another factor that can make it easy to continue eating foods that don’t support us, we see others indulging too and so consider it normal, yet our bodies deal with the consequences and the only gauge of whether a food is right or not is how we feel after eating it.

It came to me the other day that food is now a substitute for nicotine addiction. Many, including myself, kicked the nicotine habit, years ago when presented with clear evidence that it harmed our bodies, but then transferred one dependency for another, food. Food is a more insidious drug, because it is readily available, and in abundance, everywhere. When used with discernment it’s a source of nourishment, but when not, it becomes an obsession, easily affordable, and very accessible fix. We find it everywhere, at home, work, rest, school, play, street, train, every activity centres on food. We have lost our true relationship with it. Once the key to human survival providing nourishment and energy for daily activities and often where one meal a day sufficed, now, especially in the western economies , eating is often unrelated to hunger. It has become a constant and unconscious activity throughout the day: meal times, in-between meals, in bed, on public transport, at our desks, in cars, walking. No wonder there’s an obesity epidemic in the West. We know that many people use food to compensate what is missing in a person’s life, love, relationship, affection or to dull down emotional hurts. But it’s effects are short-lived, before we reach out for the next hit. Food manufacturers know this and often produce food that tempts the palate and leave us wanting more. Advertisers have become adept at selling food as a substitute for partners, friendships, love, sex, happiness, ‘A mars a day helps you work, rest and play’ Need I say more.

Great points you raise here kehinde2012, especially about how food advertising is everywhere and is very tempting. Just a quick read of food labels in the supermarket and I notice that there is sugar added to things like chicken and bread. Crazy! We as the consumers have to become more aware of the effects such hidden sugars are having on our bodies. Diabetes is one of the fastest growing preventable diseases of the western world.

I can so relate to your story Nathalie – I too used to devour chocolate. For me it was really easy to stop eating other things. However sugar and chocolate were much, much harder. After quitting gluten and dairy I still had a cupboard that contained chocolate, biscuits and nutty treats which I referred to as my naughty cupboard! I don’t remember the time when I actually stopped consuming these products but the desire for them gradually tailed off the more I was living from self nurturing and care. Like you my body became much more sensitive to what I was eating and I could no longer enjoy what these products were doing to it. If anything sweet went into my mouth I did not enjoy the sensation of it nor did I like the raciness that followed. To consume these products now are no longer a pleasure or a comfort but feel like an abuse. Ten years ago I would have laughed if someone had told me that I would no longer like eating chocolate or sugar!

In some ways, I was fortunate that although I did enjoy chocolate, it was only in relatively small quantities. It didn’t take a lot before I started to feel a bit nauseous. The unfortunate part was that my addiction was with alcohol rather than chocolate, an even worse destroyer of self. Although I always knew it was harming me, I drank almost daily for 40 years. It was only when it became clear to me just how much damage the alcohol had done to me and with the help of Universal Medicine explaining what else alcohol was allowing into my life energetically that I knew I must give it up and I had not the slightest problem doing so. It was a commitment to myself that not another drop will pass my lips around 8 years ago and a drop never will.

Oh wow Nathalie how amazing are you to give up chocolate. I certainly know how it is to give up chocolate. I would eat chocolate every single day, I never had a weight problem so it was easy to eat it every day. I haven’t had chocolate for six years now, and I don’t miss it because I would rather feel good in my body and not sick from eating chocolate. I still have a sweet tooth and someday that will go to, I certainly don’t get the sugar cravings that I used to have.

For many years I never believed I would stop eating chocolate, I just found it so soothing whenever I felt less than great, and I also noticed I used it to dull myself down when I felt really energised, so I was using it for every reason possible. Yet eating it always left me feeling drained and it started to affect my sleep. I believe the more we are aware of the effects of the food we eat, the more willing we are to consider if they are supportive. As you share Nathalie, ultimately if we care for ourselves and have a growing level of self love then there is little discipline required to not have foods we know harm us, it is just something we slowly realise we no longer wish to consume.

It is simply not enough to say I’ll stop eating something because it makes me feel sick and its unhealthy.
I’ve tried this method again and again… it does not work in the long term.

The reason it doesn’t work is because you aren’t eating the indulgent purely for the indulgence. We are eating it because of our unresolved issues.

I know, from personal experiences, if I want to kick a bad habit I need to address the root cause to why I’m doing this bad habit in the first place.
If I don’t I’ll be in constant denial, going backwards and forwards thinking I’m making life changing progress. But really just going around in circles because in some periods of my life I’ve kicked the habit while 2 weeks later it returns once more.

Thank you Nathalie for sharing about your journey with quitting chocolate. I went through the same struggle, I was very much into cakes and chocolate to comfort myself and give me a bit of a boost when I was low in energy, which was most of the time. Only when I came across Universal Medicine and was offered some true healing was I able to let go of this substitute for love. And I was able to re-connect to that place inside where I am love and allow myself to feel this deeply.

A former chocohilic I can totally relate to how you describe this addiction. What’s great is that your list of things you noticed after having given up chocolate: “I have definitely become more aware – more aware of my feelings, more in tune with my mind, my thoughts and reflections” are exactly the reasons we go for chocolate… to avoid our awareness, block out our feelings and to be racy enough not to have to reflect!

An amazing story Nathalie, the cycle of addiction is a tough one to break and one that lives in more people and in more way that we would care to admit. Chocolate wasn’t my drug, but the process you describe is such a solid way to truly deal with any issue and I have also found the esoteric modalities very supportive in keeping the process real.

Yes, it can be chocolate, ecstasy tablets, an obsession with exercise, being a workaholic or alcohol. And so much more. We can use all sorts of things as vices that we become reliant on, addicted to because deep down we simply miss ourselves.

Yes Katerina, it is just that, we miss our tender, delicate selves. Food, or whatever the behaviour, are just the symptoms. It is so liberating to finally feel this and then it really is effortless, a natural choice.

Thank you for sharing so openly and honestly how we use food and alcohol to fill the space that we have not filled with ourselves. I have also used foods (chocolate included) to numb, soothe and relieve this restlessness and uneasiness. I can also relate how in the end I was finding that these foods were making me feel sick. And how by going deeper and exploring why I was choosing to eat these foods, has offered me the opportunity to heal hurts that I has been carrying for a very long time.

Carola I too now gauge what foods my body needs by how I feel after eating it. I didn’t use chocolate or sweets much but I have continued to eat foods that I feel sick from afterwards… this is becoming less as I listen and give up these foods.

Dear Nathalie,
So lovely reading your journey to giving up chocolate. For me food in general has been a big comfort, so much so, that even when I felt something that I was eating, was clearly not supporting my body, I would stop eating it, but found myself resenting my body for not being able to tolerate that food, especially if I really liked the taste of it. For me the honesty was the beginning, to fully let go of the food, I then have to accept in full what my body knows, without a doubt.

I’ve definitely done this too Leigh – stopped eating a food because of how badly my body reacted to it, but started eating it again thinking I ‘should’ be able to cope with and tolerate it. I did this with nuts for years – macadamias in particular… Every time I ate them I got spots, felt pretty bloated and tired too, but I couldn’t watch my family (who LOVE macadamias) continue eating handfuls and handfuls without feeling angry at myself for being so sensitive… Eventually I did claim that I was in fact probably mildly allergic to them, and I’m now macadamia free 🙂

Dear Nathalie,
Thanks you for this very real account of wanting to eat chocolate so badly. It all sounds so familiar. Although it wasn’t chocolate for me I have had this same kind of relationship with food – with me the type of food would often differ, but the intensity of wanting to go on eating is the same. It has been stunning for me to discover how I have not been eating for the sake of the body’s true wellbeing but for the sake of wanting to assuage some feeling inside me, or stop myself from feeling a reaction I have had to something, or to reward myself –some years ago now I used to love, in the holidays, going out and sitting under the trees in the garden after lunch, and reading a novel while scoffing a packet of BBQ corn chips! A double addiction. I remember saying to my now ex-husband – why do I enjoy reading about someone else’s life so much – does this mean there is something inadequate about my own life??

Lyndy – i can really relate to this, ‘It has been stunning for me to discover how I have not been eating for the sake of the body’s true wellbeing but for the sake of wanting to assuage some feeling inside me, or stop myself from feeling a reaction I have had to something, or to reward myself’, Im much more aware of this now, i can feel that overeating for me is an addiction and it feels awful when i do it, it is great to have the awareness around this and slowly I am changing this, i feel so much lighter and more me when I do not overeat and i’m realising that I need to deal with issues as they arise rather than try and fill myself up on food as this never works.

Hey Rebecca, I also tend to overeat. It`s an old pattern und started more than ten years ago. It occurs especially in the evening when I am with myself and the whole day is there to be felt. Although I know that I should stop I often don`t do it. Afterwards I feel awful and always say I will not do that again. But it happens again. I feel more and more that there are big hurts underneath my overeating and I have not fully decided to go there and face them yet, but I will…

Nathalie this is such a great article. Your perseverance to find the truth about your ongoing need for sweets and chocolates is inspirational, It’s very easy to go for sweet treats but they do nothing except give us a belly ache after awhile. It’s amazing the changes that come about when we start to self care and deal with our hurts – it begins to be joyful just being in our body, that’s a great place to be.

I too have had a chocolate addiction to sweetens hurts, to bury the pain I was feeling on the body. It definitely felt like comfort eating chocolate. What made me stop was no longer wanting to feel the raciness on my body, Suffer from hypoglycaemia and insomnia.

There are so many ways in which we try to fill up the void from the lack of connection to others and ourselves. Chocolate and sweet foods are such a relied upon fix. I have heard many people say ‘I can live without many things but don’t take away my chocolate. Deep down we don’t like to be dependant on anything outside ourselves and from this place you have built a loving relationship within yourself so that the crutch that once relied upon chocolate no longer has the hold on you, this is supper cool …….

Nathalie that was such great timing for me to read this. I too have struggled with chocolate and these days it’s carob but like you I also know that the time is coming when I will not need this anymore. I look forward to this day.

Yeah it was chocolate for me first, then carob, then gluten free and dairy free, refined sugar free chocolate, and since I made the choice to not do any of them anymore, the dates came in. As of now, they are also on their way out again…

Homemade carob is a great transition away from chocolate. In recent weeks, I have deepened my connection to my body and my essence, seeing all the layers of behaviours that I have chosen to deny my true self and feeling the immense sadness of this. Even though I have seen all of these for some years now, I felt ready to get really honest and go there and WOWIE, I’m not making carob anymore. It is a reminder to be really gentle with ourselves because by committing to love and evolution, the changes and shifts take care of themselves.

Colleagues at work often marvel at the fact that I don’t eat chocolate. They simply can’t understand why anyone would want to live without it. I know that I feel 100 times healthier because I don’t eat it, and the temporary comfort I would get from it is simply not worth it. It seems that people ‘need’ it so much as a coping strategy and can’t imagine life without it.

I work in an environment where expensive and ‘good quality’ chocolate is on offer daily. I used to love chocolate, but have no difficulty resisting the constant offers to partake. I can see how food can be used to tempt, control, manipulate, my consistent refusal keeps me free of the games that people play.

Being addicted to diary-sugary food for not having to stop and feel what is there to feel inside, weather this is misery or glory, is a familiar one for me. And just like you wrote, Natalie, it doesn’t stop with will power it asks to go a lever deeper inside and make different choices.

Hmm, for me it is not the chocolate, but the sugar which I still fall for. And as for you, it sweetens up my days which are not so lovely. And especially when I exhausted myself during the day – then the sugar kick is always a welcome solution to pull me up. You may think now I eat tons of candies and put sugar in my drinks etc. No that’s not the case.. I do not use refined white or brown sugar for years now, but you can find ‘sugar’ everywhere in the food. Fruits are more sweet than in my childhood. Self-made nut balls and cookies with honey are fine, but too much of it… ‘sugar’. Popcorn or maize cracker… ‘sugar’. I know where to find it when I need it. But going honest with me why I need it, like exhaustion, and working on that, helps me to eat less and less of ‘sugar’.

Nathalie. I know your feelings on beating that addiction called CHOCOLATE. It took me years to beat my addiction, and I do not miss it now. WE all know what chocolate can do to the body, with all that sugaring it.

When I tell myself I have to stop eating a certain food, I will mostly last for one day, think about that food a 100 times and end up eating it even more the next day (or the day after…). So for me it is not about telling myself I cannot eat certain foods but to really be honest and observe why I eat certain foods. In my experience, I then don’t leave the food, but the food leaves me, as I no longer need it.

Beautifully said, Mariette. Using discipline to eliminate something from our diet does nothing but make us miserable, as we have no relationship to what is really going on for us and why we are choosing what we are. Being honest about what we are eating and why opens a gateway for love to return to the situation, which heals the emptiness we have been trying to fill with the food. I love this – “then don’t leave the food, but the food leaves me, as I no longer need it.”

I agree Mariette, when we don’t make it a rule that we can’t eat certain things, but just simply become aware of how we feel after eating them, there is definitely a time when as you say “I then don’t leave the food, but the food leaves me, as I no longer need it.”. It can often take a little while for my head to catch up with what’s going on in my body, so I might continue to buy a certain food and only twig to what’s going on when I have to throw it out because it’s gone off! This doesn’t happen for me with what I consider to be treats – stopping eating chocolate was a conscious choice but it was one that occurred over a period of time, without any force or struggle to stay off it. It still blows me away that I don’t even think about eating chocolate anymore – I used to have no control over myself when I had it in the house. I’d eat everything in sight all at once. Now it’s completely gone from my life.

Mariette, I have found the same to be true. It doesn’t matter wether it be chocolate or even something that I do. If I tell myself I cannot or mustn’t eat or do it I set myself to fail and bring such attention to the subject matter that it becomes constantly there in my head. I love how you describe that once you’ve been honest about why you are eating such foods they leave you.

I like that Mariette, the foods leaves you, I have experienced that too, it is not in my sphere or consciousness any more. When I used to feel like a reward chocolate and sweets would be my first thought but this is not the case any more. There are occasions when I see something that looks really enticing and there is a fleeting thought, but no more than that as I know that the harm it does to me is never worth the few moments of reward that it offers me.

Mariette what you share here is so true. I know I have played so many games around food telling myself not to go there and yet I find that I do. However, when I consciously and honestly tell myself the negative effects of eating that food and the damage that it does this also helps alongside understanding why I am reaching for that food in the moment.

My family will confirm that I am a person of little willpower, so I have always find diets of any kind very unappealing. Like Mariette I would try and not indulge and so put desirable items in hidden locations, but that only slowed me down. I found that especially with sugary items like sweet biscuits or ice-cream once I started I couldn’t stop, so I’d eat until my belly hurt and then feel really lethargic and all my good intentions for the day would be gone. I then needed something to cut through the body heaviness, and would have several cups of coffee … total madness. And I wouldn’t know what to eat for nourishment because my digestion was completely out of whack. However, these days I can join my colleagues for morning tea, or walk down the biscuit aisle of the supermarket without a tug most days. If I do feel a tug I know it’s because I’m feeling out of sorts, and once that feeling is recognised and truly felt I’m back to myself again. So how did I do this – by learning to connect to myself and honour me, a process which did involve support from esoteric practitioners, as well as learning that the issue is never about the food in the first instance, but about how I am with me.

Thank you Nathalie for your healthy contribution on, for me, this most insidious of all addictions. This substance for most has been there since our very early years, and yet do we actually need it? What does it actually do for us? It is inspiring for me to hear of your coming to the resounding conclusion that the cycle of abstaining and making up for lost time when partaking once more, was not something you wanted to choose for yourself anymore. For me I know that sugar is the perfect tool I’ve used to keep me from feeling what I don’t want to, so its the perfect temporary delay, because I know full well what is there to be felt will still be there once the temporary ‘cover up’ has faded – so I ask myself, why wait?

Thank you for sharing your story Nathalie. The only thing that could ever stop me from eating chocolate was the effect it had on my belly. I never realized it also affected the way I felt. About three years ago I started to realize that sugar didn’t just make me fat but is also dangerous to my health. It wasn’t until I stopped eating refined sugar that I noticed how my behaviour changed when I did eat some sugar. It turned out that the mood swings and anger fits that I had been experiencing all my life were related to my sugar intake. Without it I feel so much better but as long as I don’t get to the bottom of the why I want to eat it I am still tempted to eat some once in a while or at least something with natural sweeteners.

Great observation and experience here Nathalie, your words on the effects of going sugar free:” I have definitely become more aware – more aware of my feelings, more in tune with my mind, my thoughts and reflections. I am learning to truly connect to my body and to honour the signals it gives me”. Awareness is everything, it makes life more alert, crisp and clear; stimulation via chocolate or sugar has the reverse effect and also dulls the otherwise true enjoyment – of ourselves and of life too.

What you share here is so important Nathalie. To understand why people have an addiction to sugar (compensate their childhood hurts) and also what ill effects it has on our health like raciness. Once we start to self care, self love our life can change. How amazing that you have transformed the relationship with your mother and that she has given the permission for this blog to be published!

Although I no longer eat chocolate and haven’t for many years, I can still feel that there are others foods that I use to fill the void of not having to feel what is going on around me. The big one at the moment is nuts, particularly macadamia nuts. I have made it a focus of late to watch when I reach for a handful of nuts and when I feel I do this, I am pausing to feel do I really want to eat these or am I reaching for them because there is something that I am not wanting to feel. Usually it is the latter. Sometimes I still choose to eat those nuts, other times I feel not to and although I haven’t cracked this one as yet, I have the awareness of how I am using food to dull my awareness and with this awareness I know that this habit will slowly change.

I can relate to all you’ve said here Donna. When I make the focus the food that I ‘shouldn’t’ be eating, I have absolutely no chance of there being any true and lasting change…it is only will power, and that can quickly go out the window…conveniently forgetting how awful I might feel after eating something! It’s only when I look at the why. Why am I reaching for xyz food? Is it a certain time of the day, week or month and if so, what’s going on…what has led up to me craving or wanting it? It’s only been by addressing underlying hurts or issues that I’ve been able to walk away from chocolate, sweets and cakes … I was relying on them to sweet up my life until I started to do that from within myself.

‘It was easy to think I would manage to stop right after I’d had a feast! Right then and there I had had enough, I felt sick, emotional, sad and racy, and thought to myself, “that’s it, I’m done”. But I was just like people who have hangovers that tell themselves they will never drink again… until the next weekend, or even the next day.’ That’s a great passage Nathalie, describing the vicious cycle that is addiction. And what an interesting phenomenon it is. We can feel sad and sorry after the binge episode, feeling the impact on our body of our actions, only to do it all over again as soon as the immediate pain has gone. Getting in touch with the underlying source of tension is key, as you discovered. Congratulations, I know how hard that is!

I can relate to this blog, I used to live on a diet of freddo frogs and chic milk to relieve the pressure of the day. No matter what I did I couldn’t give this up, maybe as you say for a day or two then I would crumble and go more extreme. It wasn’t until I started to have esoteric healing sessions that I was able to put an end to this pattern. Now there is more refinement to go but I notice the difference when I do make changes.

Nathalie, this is truly beautiful and written in and with the sweetness that is truly you. A sweetness that no scrumptious bar of chocolate can match up to. And believe me, I know — sweets, chocolate and I were bosom buddies for most of my life. I wouldn’t say I don’t salivate these days when I look at sweets — I ogled at the picture in this article of all the yummy looking eclairs! — but my will to stay and connect to the sweetness in me is now so much stronger. A taste of chocolate in the mouth will give me momentary sweetness, whereas me connecting and caring for my body will give me the exquisite sweetness of me all day. No chocolate bar can come close to that.

Beautifully said, Katerina. We are only looking for sweetness on the outside because we miss the divine sweetness we are on the inside. As you say, nothing compares to that quality of love and care for ourselves and others – it fills us up with a feeling that no sweet wrapper could contain.

It is so true Nathalie, self-restraint doesn’t work! What you share offers great insight into how we can handle our addictions and more importantly to never give up on yurself no matter how many times we go around and around repeating the same choices. The main thing is we always have a choice but our choices are not who we are.

Nathalie thank you for sharing your awareness of why you were eating chocolate and how you healed the addiction. I could substitute worrying, that was my go-to place when life was difficult, and of course there was no power in that! I now appreciate the opportunities to keep going deeper with awareness and the worries are very tiny now, replaced with appreciation and joy.

Lovely to read and feel how this part of you that just ‘knew’ never gave up Nathalie. What if we all have this inner direction and sense? What if in appreciating and valuing it, it can speak louder? Perhaps then these situations become less about sweets or chocolates or other habits and more about connection and honouring us – as you sweetly show.

Oh how chocolate has a grip on so many people. I don’t think you were alone in your love for sweets Nathalie, but you sure are an amazing women for kicking it and continuing to look at why you were eating chocolate in the first place. A true healing has taken place here and seems like it will continue to do so the more you deal with all the underlying issues. Your awareness of your hurts and the help from all the practitioners is a true miracle for how much change can happen if we are willing.

We can be ruled by our addictions no matter whether they are certain foods, drinks. smoking, drugs, TV, or our emotions and the first step to being able to let go of them is to be honest and admit that there is an addiction. How truly inspiring to read how you have taken the responsibility to let go of the addiction and now feel the rewarding changes this had made to your body and mind.

Fantastic blog. it makes me realise that I too have that same addiction, to many other things other than, and including, food. Such as needing people to be a certain way, needing to be liked or favoured, craving to play sport and having a good and exciting time to liven up my life. these are all addictions. I am enough just being and living from and by me. Thanks Nathalie.

Thank you Nathalie all the way from Oslo, what a powerful article. I deeply connected to what you have shared here and learnt so much. Realising the positives of not eating sugar is amazing when the world is so in fear of losing it. And replacing “I am craving chocolate” with “What I really craved was to be truly met and deeply loved.” – Would truly change the world. By becoming honest, and listening to our bodies, true change can be made. Thank you for sharing the part of you that never gave up (something to appreciate for me also) – and simply allowing the time and space to come for things to change.

Nathalie great blog to point out that it’s self care and love not will power that stops addiction. One realization I had with myself and sweets- it’s like when I gave up smoking I new I could never have another one, that I had said good bye and that door was closed, locked and sealed. I feel the same with sweets, say goodbye and accept that it can never comes back even for a small visit. I love being with me so much the choice becomes clearer.

Kim – you are so right. When we put self care first this is the key to giving up addictions. I have not eaten anything sweet for a long time, however yesterday I was at a wedding and there were strawberries, blueberries and biscuits among the desserts. I picked up a couple of strawberries and had a bite of the biscuit. As soon as I did that I felt like I had consumed alcohol – the effect on my body was immediate. With one bite something in me kicked in that wanted another so I took it – that was enough – the drunk feeling escalated and I firmly said no to it. I really did not enjoy that feeling of not being present in my body – it was not will power that said no, but self care. It will be self care that will give me the will power to say no to it next time as I certainly did not enjoy feeling the consequences of what I had done to my body.

I am really amazed of these strong effects sugar has in your body. Sometimes I wish it would cause similar effects in mine but everything I experience is a raising heart beat as well as getting tired very quickly and that often does not keep me from eating strawberries or gluten free cake. I feel deeply that for me it`s more about a strong commitment to love my body and to feel what is there to be felt when I have a sugar drive instead of making this unloving choice.

I love how Nathalie can express openly and honestly with her mother especially talking openly and honestly about events that Nathalie found difficult in her childhood. “We now have a deeper understanding, love and connection than ever before” – the connection Nathalie has with her mother now is very beautiful… is a great example that when we take responsibility for our choices and heal our hurts our relationships change.

Yesterday, I had taken the time to make a lovely lunch for myself to eat at work, and I thought nothing of it, until a few minuets after finishing it, one of my coworkers asked me to support her to look after herself more and take more care of what she is eating and drinking. I was really surprised she would ask me, but I shared with her what I got from your blog when I read it that morning – that if she is wanting to get fit and eat healthily because she doesn’t like her body or because she feels she should, it won’t last long. But that if it comes from wanting to care for yourself, and really truly feeling what all the sugar and junk food is doing, then its far more likely to be sustainable. It allowed for a lovely conversation and I also realised that I am always willing to support someone else, but need to equally support myself in every aspect of life.

I understand how you talk of feeling ‘soothed’ or ‘numbed’ by chocolate or sweets, for me alcohol played a bigger part in my life but when I stopped drinking alcohol sugar in other forms replaced it, such as chocolate. It was a long process, I slowly let go of sugar from my diet, but now I am feeling so great and I have a connection with myself which is unbalanced if I have sugar. It feels amazing being with me with (less) need for substances that numb me.

Hello Samantha Davidson and I agree sugar is a huge one for me and I still feel the effects of it at times. As you say sugar effects me and gives me an ‘unbalance’ or really it actually disturbs the clarity I am use to feeling. The effect can linger as well, so the few minutes of supposed enjoyment can often lead to many hours and sometimes a day of a lingering unclarity. This I can see is when the choice comes home, what am I not wanting to feel in a moment that leads to me having something that will disturb me for hours later? It would seem that a choice just to feel what is there in the ‘moment’ would be a simpler option. Thank you Samantha.

It’s interesting how we comfort ourselves with food. Even though I don’t eat chocolate anymore I still do this with other forms of food. Seeing as the soul reason for eating food is to simply nourish our bodies, why would we choose to eat anything that we don’t actually need? When viewed like this it makes it seem ridiculous that we choose to eat for other reasons than to nourish ourselves.

Thank you Natalie. What an awesome unfolding and healing. I could relate to your sweet teeth as I he’s to eat, well very easily over eat chocolate and sweets. They gave me me that comfort feeling too and sweetened the misery I felt at that time. I loved how you humorously told your story.

This is a brilliant post. There is a simpler way to look at addiction and that is to see it as a repetitive pattern of behaviour that we choose to go into in order not to feel something else. When we look at it this way we realize that there is no difference between someone who chooses drugs and alcohol and someone who chooses chocolate to bury their hurts, and so in this regard there is no judgement when it comes to addiction when it is seen in this light. It is simply a choice.

Hello Adam Warburton and I love this, “There is a simpler way to look at addiction and that is to see it as a repetitive pattern of behaviour that we choose to go into in order not to feel something else.” We can relate this to many things and it takes the stigma that is often associated with addictions and also brings in more responsibility. Often we can compare to others to again make ourselves feel better but all ‘addictions’ are as you say Adam, simply “a repetitive pattern of behaviour that we choose to go into in order not to feel something else.” Thanks Adam, a great addition.

Well said Raymond and Adam. It’s about real honesty, isn’t it – something I know in myself is ever-deepening, to truly get to the root of why I may choose certain behaviours that do not support me as fully as those I could very well choose.
The honesty to state what’s going on – and then the choice to truly honour oneself, and do it differently.
All of which I have found to be supported no end by Universal Medicine’s presentations and therapies. What an amazing and powerful process to undertake with oneself – that can have far greater repercussions through our relationships and communities if we truly give ourselves a chance.
Imagine if chocolate, for example, no longer sat on our supermarket check-out counters, and there were no longer whole aisles full of the stuff… We can all head there, but it takes some diligence, work – and yes, the responsibility for our own choices.

Great reflections Adam and Raymond – there is no difference between an alcohol and drug addiction and being addicted to chocolate. It is all a choice – a choice to escape our pains and hurts… at least for a moment.

Absolutely Adam, addiction has so many facets and we can choose from alcohol, drugs, sweets, religion, sports, food, TV, porn, games, there are so many ways to numb ourselves with to not to feel and to deal with our origin hurts. It comes back to our choice and not to be the victim anymore.

Addiction to chocolate is no different to any other addictions we have as they all support in the numbing so we don’t have to feel what’s going on. Honesty is the best cure for addictions as it asks you to go deeper and feel why there is the need for the addiction. This is when true healing takes place as we start to deal with all the hurts that have been experienced in life.

As a child I had a serious addiction to sweets. It coincided with the separation of my parents, so no real coincidence there, but I definitely used them as a way to dull what I was feeling, or as you put it ‘bring some sweetness to me life’ when I was feeling there was none. As I got older I started noticing the affect that it was having on my moods, which would be a rollercoaster of giddy happiness and deep depression. I started by trying to manage my blood sugar by using nutritional supplements, but I was not addressing the root of the problem, I was only trying to keep it covered up so I could continue to eat sugar.
Eventually I realised that the sugar I was consuming was in order to cover up a deep sadness within. It took time and patience, along with a deep dedication to allowing myself to feel that I am worth feeling like myself, before I was able to truly let the need for sugar go from my life. But now that it is gone, I really do not miss it!

Yes chocolate is a big one! I have found the two most helpful thing in giving up drugs like chocolate, alcohol, indulgent emotions etc was 1) to deal with my “stuff” and heal my issues so that I started to feel yummy inside and 2) to connect to how horrible these things made me feel. Once I had a lovely new experience in my body it became easier for me to make a choice to not do, say or think something that would clearly disconnect me from that. The Unimed Living Meditation Sphere offers lots of great free audio that help connect to that yummy feeling inside include a Yummy Gentle Breath Meditation – http://www.unimedliving.com/meditation/free/meditation-for-beginners/yummy-gentle-breath-meditation.html

Food is such a great reflection and as you shared, it doesn´t work with your mind to let go of stuff you feel is not right for your body, it must come from the care for yourself within. I read everyday, where I was at, in what I ate. To be honest with myself and not hard, if anything slipped in, is the best way forward for me.

What you share here Natalie is very powerful. So often when looking at addictive behaviours and patterns we think will power is what we need to stop. The underlying reason as to why we do them is not looked at.

“it all came from a need to ‘fix’ the problem rather than from choosing a genuine and loving care for myself and my wellbeing.” Your words jumped out at me Nathalie. It’s interesting how we see the chocolate, alcohol, drugs, weight etc. as the problem that we have to ‘fix’ instead of asking ourselves “How much do I truly care and love myself” and seeing that as the problem that I might need to address. Once we start to question what’s behind the choice we are getting closer to what is really going on.

Natalie, I can relate to your blog so easily because of the relationship I had with alcohol. It was common place for me to say ‘never again’ when I was hungover but it I would end up going out and drinking again to dull what I was actually feeling – sometimes the next day. You could say I was religious about the way I drank yet what is interesting is since I started esoteric healing sessions with Universal Medicine practitioners I found alcohol incredibly easy to give up. I started to look at why I was drinking and whether I actually enjoyed it which I knew I didn’t and it became a thing of the past. In the last three years I’ve had half a beer and no intention of drinking any more.

Nathalie, I was never really a chocoholic, I enjoyed the occasional piece of dark chocolate, however I liked other things like cake and biscuits. Until you really understand why you eat something. Willpower isn’t enough to stop, once you get down to the root of why you eat something and bring understanding to it, it is so much easier to realise that when you have that connection to yourself you don’t feel to eat it, because there is no emptiness to fill up.

A great article to read Nathalie, I can relate to having a similar craving for chocolate a few years ago and never felt I would ever be able to stop eating it. Despite making myself feel sick afterwards, I would still reach for more the following day. After attending Universal Medicine presentations, I was able to completely let go of my addiction to chocolate as I became more aware of feeling my body, how much eating chocolate was affecting me and the underlying reason for why I was seeking comfort.

This is a great sharing Natalie as it is challenging the common belief that chocolate is a normal and day to day sweet we can consume without any problem. Like so many other comfort foods that have established themselves to be on a normal daily diet for most of the population. Just thinking of common breakfast that generally involves any kind of sweet pastry often garnished with chocolate. Every day at the end of school picking up our daughter I observe how it is normalized that parents reward their kids with chocolate, cake or any other sweet food. I have been often judged for being hard and not letting the kids enjoy the passion of food for not providing them constantly with sugar and all those delicious tasty things. How have we come so far that we just accept so called food that makes us sick, unwell and alters our awareness to be part of our daily diet?

For so long I had an ideal diet in my head about what was good and bad for me and my family to eat. This became a great focus of my time, and often set us up to fail because we could never satisfy these imagined ideal standards. So, recently I decided to stop trying to force myself in to a different pattern of eating and just allow myself to eat whatever I had a craving for – but I promised myself that I would feel my body all the time. This helped me very deeply because once the effect of the food was actually felt, the impact of it’s elements on my body was acknowledged, it became very easy to not only say no to these foods later on, but to not crave them in the first place because in a sense, it is my body which is being allowed to make the decisions about what it needs, and not my head from perceived ideas. This has also helped me to stop imposing my ideals on to my family, allowing them the space to discover their relationships with food for themselves.

Nathalie, I can well related to having a sweet tooth. Once upon a time a trip to the supermarket invariably meant that I would also go to the confectionery isle while I was there and stock up. Then if I had it in the fridge or cupboard I would keep eating until it was all gone. Naturally, my body wasn’t impressed! Over time since attending Universal Medicine workshops and having sessions with practitioners I have learned that using my will power to give up wasn’t the answer: I needed to start from the inside and work out. As I have done this bit by bit, I have lost the urge to look for sweet things to eat and wow – that feels amazing!

I stopped eating chocolate a few years ago after being a real chocoholic and I can occasionally remember the sweet taste in the mouth. But I can now also recall from my body was how I used to feel before eating the chocolate, I would have been nervous, racy and agitated, out of control, and the chocolate would have numbed those emotions. So instead of having the chocolate, I feel my body more, because something must be different for me to have thought about the taste. It’s a great reminder to come back to my body and be with me again.

So so true Luke when you say…’ It is simply not enough to say I’ll stop eating something because it makes me feel sick and its unhealthy. I’ve tried this method again and again… it does not work in the long term.’ Will power is thought to be such a powerful thing but it is not – a battle is set up which keeps us in such unease. Only when we have found out the root cause of why we behave in a certain way and can really feel the truth of it, is it possible to let go a bad habit. Otherwise, as you say Luke, it just comes back to haunt us.

More and more people are waking up to the harm that sugar causes. To actually stop eating sugar however requires more than the awareness that it is bad for your health, it requires a person to first be honest about why they are eating sugar in the first place. If this is done then the behaviour can be addressed.

I agree Nathalie we are entirely responsible for our own choices and as adults we need to look at our childhood hurts and deal with them by getting the necessary support if needed, as otherwise they get in the way of leading a fulfilling life.

Nathalie, this blog might as well be the autobiography of my life. I have not eaten chocolate for many years now after a life of addiction. I can look at it, smell it, have people wave bars of it in front of my face and there is no urge in me to eat it.
How does that happen when once upon a time in my sad past, jut the thought of being without it for a day used to put me in a cold sweat?
There was a point when I got to know 2 things about chocolate. It was a balm for my wounded psyche, and it was making me physically ill. Those 2 moments of honesty helped, but what made the giving up process fire right up for me was the fact that I started to attend to the wound.
Yes, I got to know about myself and started to take care of this body of mine, put myself to bed at a time when my body wanted to go, and to see counsellors who were wise and looked after themselves too. I started to eat great food that agreed with me. Chocolate started to stand out against a background of that much care.
The ‘hook’ of the sweetness and the creamy texture no longer pierced my flesh. There was a greater sweetness to be savoured that was innate in me. And I no longer felt the craving for the creamy thickness which just clogged me up with a sludginess that masked the pain and the emerging loveliness. Once I felt that drugging dullness the appeal was never the same.
The wrestling match with the chocolate makers ended, with a fizz, rather than an explosion, and never have I celebrated a change in my life with so much joy.

This is a blog in itself Rachel – a powerful sharing.
I can relate to no longer being tempted by chocolate whatsoever. And that really is the stand-out here from Nathalie’s article, that if we do truly take care of ourselves and tend to our inner issues and hurts – gently and lovingly, with the deepest honesty – the props we once used to keep ourselves going and/or numb ourselves from an inner pain, no longer have a place. I can only attribute this myself to the astounding work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, without which such inner changes would not have occurred for me in this way.
And this, from someone who was once such a dark chocolate-based ‘dessert queen’, that people at my table could only moan (and not speak) when they ate my creations. These simply no longer have a place.

I so relate Rachel – for me it was not so much the chocolate (although I enjoyed it a lot until I really felt the yuckiness of it in my moth, the sticky sweet dull taste, and that was that then). The letting go of it as you describe it occurred for me with coffee – making a choice as I truly felt into my body, and just by making that choice the perceived need for it fell away from one second to the next, with not a single thought, urge, desire or wish for ever drinking it again. It is simply gone.

Chocolate was not my thing, I used drugs and alcohol to numb myself to the fact that I was never cared about when young . As soon as I started caring for myself I no longer needed to take drugs and alcohol. It is that simple, we just need to deal with the underlying reason of why we are doing this in the first place, then the drugs drop away

“Sugar was my way of sweetening up my life.”
As a child growing up, when my parents spoke about sweets, chocolate or cake they would use a deeper more enticing voice – they knew absolutely that this was bad for you but through the voice it was accepted and succumbed to. If we are willing to be honest we do know how toxic sugar is in our bodies and how we use it to override our feelings. Thank-you Nathalie for this super honest blog.

Sugar is the drug of choice for nearly the entire population of the planet. It is an enormous industry and the health complications and strain on our health systems and economy is beyond huge. I understand your addiction Nathalie from personal experience and know how disastrous this is on the body. The industry is built from our own indulgences and irresponsibility of not dealing with our hurts…so I love your story of responsibility and claiming yourself back from the daily poison that is supporting humanity to dampen and deaden themselves to such an extent that it becomes ingrained and normal. When you haven’t eaten sugar for some time and then you have it again, you can most certainly feel that it is definitely not normal.

Nathalie you paint the picture of chocolate addiction very well. In the early nineties I read a book about drugs called “From Chocolate To Morphine”, so the addictiveness of chocolate has been known for quite a while. Amazing how, even knowing that, it is legal and heavily promoted like alcohol and cigarettes! However your story would be of benefit to the ‘victims’ of addiction: everything is a choice, and by choosing a self-loving way, the grip of harmful behaviours and indulgences can be broken.

Dianne T, I couldn’t agree more – it is amazing, that it is not only legal but heavily promoted. It is very clear that when it comes to money making industries like sugar and alcohol, our governments and society as a whole is so corrupted and greedy for the income of these goods that we are completely blind to reality and the long term consequenses that needs to be dealt with further down the road.

I can relate Nathalie, I have not only used chocolate and sweets as rewards but all food. I go from being disciplined to being careless time and time again. It is only when I deal with my emotional or psychological issues that I am able to refrain from over-indulging. I have also found the more joy and greater vitality I have in my life the less need for chocolate and sweets.

I was more into savoury than sweet however savoury foods were used in exactly the same way as you describe Nathalie…to numb and or check out when things weren’t going well, and I didn’t want to look at what was going on.
I tried to give up gluten 18 years ago but couldn’t get past not having bread – how could I possibly live without bread? I made many gluten free loaves of bread in an attempt to continue eating bread but they never worked out, and so I went back to having gluten. At the time it was more of an idea and I wasn’t feeling the effect of it on my body. Seven yrs ago I decided to give up gluten and dairy. I was more honest about how they were affecting my body but even with this awareness, gluten was easy to drop, however dairy took 6 months to let go of- and the most challenging to give up was cheese and the comfort that brought. Eventually it went as I ate less and less until one day it tasted horrible, and that was the end of dairy as well. Having a level of honesty and willingness to look at why we need these foods is when true and long lasting change will occur.

Great blog Nathalie. It reminds me that I also have things in my life that ‘sweeten up’ my life. Not chocolate, but things from the outside, like food in general, that I use to feel better. It shows me that I still have to work on connecting deeper with my own sweetness.

Thank you for sharing your story. I am sure so many of us can relate, just substituting another word for chocolate. I have often reflected on my relationship with ‘treats’ that began in my childhood and how they are used as fillers for love. My week was marked by the highlights of a lolly bag on Wednesday, fish and chips on Friday, roast and chocolate on saturday and an icy pole on Sundays. The focus was never on feeding myself with my own love or the love in my relationships. It constantly kept me looking forward to the next treat and I started to believe this was the way to make life sweeter. Although I eat really healthily I still use food to make me feel better or take away an uncomfortable feeling. Like you I know this will pass as I relearn to bring the focus back to loving and supporting me.

I don’t know of many children who would have grown up without being given ‘treats’ – as something special, Fiona. This is so endemic. And the ‘treats’ were always something that left our nervous system racy, our digestive system often out of kilter…. Phew.
Your comment here has awakened a clear memory of going straight to the local shop with my weekly pocket money – to buy bubble gum (a huge amount of which was stuffed in one’s mouth at once!), and lots of 1 cent lollies. We didn’t question any of this, until the price went up… This definitely left myself and my friends on quite a ‘buzzy high’ for hours – and what did it set up for adulthood, but the same seeking of treats and the need for them at a certain point of the week. None of this was questioned, and all of it undoubtedly contributes to rates of ill-health, diabetes, and the rest today – and the prevalence of chocolate and lollies that remains at our supermarket counters.

This is such a great topic to talk about Nathalie…one that so many of us can relate to. We get hooked on sweet foods from a very young age when we are rewarded with sweets for something we’ve done well, to soothe a hurt (ie. we fall and graze our knee and are given sweet to soothe us) or for being a good boy or girl. So we learn that sweets equal love, or so it seems as we experience loving gestures from those around us in the form of sweets. This then sets us up into our adult life to keep seeking sweet foods when we don’t feel loved…but it isn’t love we’re craving from others, it starts with us, and the love we feel from within ourselves that we are craving.

Excellent put, Sandra, and I totally agree. It starts from very young, and for me it turned out to be a strong addiction to soothe and comfort me for not feeling loved. Basically, the chocolate cravings have been about not having loved myself all along..

This is brilliant Nathalie, everyone with a chocolate addiction (or any addiction for that matter) should read your blog. For me I knew the chocolate thing all to well, but mostly whilst reading it brought me back to a period in my life when I was giving up smoking. Although I wanted so much to give up, I struggled with this as it was serving a very real purpose in my life ~ it was suppressing and soothing my hurts, giving me a false sense of being able to cope with life. I understand the process you went through all to well, thank you for writing and sharing it with us. The world needs to read stories such as these.

Yes, Anna, giving up smoking (or any other addiction) is similar. There was no way whatsoever that I could have given up smoking until I got the point where I was willing to be honest about 3 things: what it was doing for me ie what it allowed me to avoid feeling, how much this avoidance pattern controlled my life, what it was doing to my body. It felt very freeing to have this awareness, and I was then able to give up without a problem.

Yes, same for me in giving up smoking, it became a letting go of smoking because I went beyond to the very uncomfortable and felt what needed to be felt within, and from there with honesty I came to the truth of why I was smoking. As I worked on this, the smoking was not needed anymore and it was the greatest feeling of liberation to not have it and I have never ever thought about it or being tempted since. However in the past when I worked on giving up smoking without going to the true cause, I never really gave up because the addiction was constantly hankering at me.

Nathalie I remember years ago being on an elimination diet and sugar was one of the things that I cut out, cold turkey. This gave me such an appreciation of the emotionality in how and why we eat. It was very challenging and certainly did not last beyond the period that I was on the diet, which was 6 weeks. So mind over matter may work initially, but it does not last. I no longer eat a lot of foods, but gain real comfort in nuts. What is interesting with this is that I often eat them when I am not hungry and I can overeat too. It’s like I am watching myself in slow motion eating them, knowing that I have no need to eat them, but have been overtaken by a desire to eat. I’m in the process of tracking back to what leads to this desire. I can feel how I eat to sabotage myself, especially when I feel very strong and confident within. So this way of eating is actually a way that I use to stop me from feeling this. So interesting to observe….

I am with you Jennifer and the nuts. Very interesting to observe indeed, although I am eating far less nuts at the moment, I still eat them when I am not hungry at all. They make me feel very heavy and I also eat them to sabotage myself. But I am not telling myself that I cannot have them as this does not work. Nuts is like chocolate, different flavor but all the same at the end of the day.

What you share about ‘mind over matter ‘ Jennifer has never worked for me either! I could never just give up sweet things as my will power isn’t very strong! I also have eaten for comfort when I am not hungry and watch myself in the action of choosing something, which my body does not want but my emotions do. In going underneath the emotions and supporting myself with the issue trigger … hey presto… no urges to eat what my body is not supported by!

I love what you have written Nathalie, and I can relate I have played so many games when giving up chocolate as well falling into the illusion of raw food cacao not being choclate. The will power game became self fulfilling cycle of failure.
Understanding myself and commitment to being honest is what has led to real change.

So true Nicole, the mind is a very tricky thing indeed, imagine convincing myself that I am not eating chocolate because it is pure cacao. Funny thing is, it has the same effect in my mouth and on my body, just like the full dairy milk chocolate. Mmmm need to keep looking at that emptiness I am really trying to soothe and fill.

Wow Nathalie, this is exactly what I needed to read today and sums me up very well! I am currently within this viscous sugar/sweet cycle and have tried several times to quit chocolate but I just end up indulging even more.

I am starting to grow more aware of the effects such as the raciness, constipation and irritability. I have even concluded that it keeps me awake if I consume it after about 2pm. (Yes, I’ve worked it out to a fine art!). But none of this has stopped me eating it. Not yet anyway.

I can be very sneaky and clever in the way I purchase and consume it too as there is a level of shame knowing what others will say. “Two hot chocolates in one day?! How indulgent!!” …

I feel empty without it some days but, with the support of esoteric practitioners, I am beginning to understand, that it is this emptiness within me that triggers the cravings. If I am low or tired, lacking confidence, bored or sad, I reach for sugar. This has always been the case. Even if it’s not chocolate, I’ll find a substitute like cereal which gives me exactly the same hit.

The truth is, that this exhaustion/sadness/boredom is a symptom of not loving myself, and looking for love outside of myself. So, day by day, I chip away at the issue and work at loving my self again. It can be challenging, and I’ve definitely given into chocolate many times but I know that one day I will no longer need it, and your article is very supportive and inspires for me to keep going. Thank you!

Tiredness was and still is at times the main factor for me to slide into old habits of indulging in foods that feed a comfort/need. They can even be healthy foods that have nourished me in the past eg: nuts, crackers etc. To watch that my plate is not over full as the quantity of said meal can also leave me feeling in the same discomfort – my eyes wanting to see a full plate – the opposite to what my body is really telling me! Thank you Nathalie for this inspired open/honest sharing with us all.

Oh how I can relate to your delightfully honest sugar story Nathalie. I too was a chocoholic. I can even remember buying Easter eggs for my children, eating them all and then having to go out and buy more! Like you I have been able to renounce the dreaded addiction as a result of slowly re-connecting to my body with the loving support of Universal Medicine and the incredible practitioners, and realise that my mind might have liked chocolate but my body didn’t – it hated it! And I don’t miss it one little bit!

Thank you Nathalie for sharing this great insight into addiction , its true whatever the addiction and it seems we can be addicted to any thing, there is always a reason why we keep the habit going, it is not until we go to an honesty of what is happening and why , then the truth if we are open to it is made clear and the underlying need is exposed in us, without the need to blame another or use a substance to keep it buried . In that awareness the habit has no hold because we see it as it truly is.

That was your choice and mine Nathalie (!) for soothing away unwanted feelings. Eating is a very common behaviour to deal with unwanted emotions. And eating chocolate is all the more convenient as it is socially acceptable and readily available in any local shop. I could therefore stay oblivious as it would appear I was not doing any harm (after all it’s not drugs, alcohol or cigarettes!). But I’ve come to realise over the years that even the foods that might ordinarily be considered healthy can have the same affect on me as chocolate used to have, for example nuts – will give me a numbing effect or sweet fruits will speed up my system, they are both very soothing to eat when something is there that I don’t want to feel. I love your sentence “no amount of chocolate can ever fill up the void or drown out the sadness of childhood experiences.” It just goes to show that the only way to stop the addictive behaviour is to deal with the emotion that calls upon it.

I know, Rosanna, chocolate IS socially acceptable, and at ANY time of the day, more so than alcohol and drugs, and I used to eat chocolate at ANY time of the day.. I used to hold grudges to the grocery stores for making chocolate so convenient. I also remember wishing I would get some strange skin reaction or something (green spots?), – so it would force me to stop, – anything so that I didn’t have to take responsibility myself.
But as you say, and I agree: “the only way to stop the addictive behaviour is to deal with the emotion that calls upon it.” Well said.

Yes Rosanna,
Chocolate is a very insidious drug – it may be legal and socially acceptable, however, because the effects can be more subtle than taking hard drugs, you could be addicted to chocolate for an entire lifetime without ever realising you have a problem… whereas with with other substances, such as alcohol, cigarettes or drugs, you are more likely to hit a turning point sooner where you say ‘no more’ and can see there is a problem to be addressed.

What grabs my eye is the sweetness in the last phrase: “published with permission of my mum”, the lovely relationship that you have now after sharing and healing old hurts shows in your blog. And I have a feeling that it has had an effect in you giving up chocolate and sweets. Healing the lack of attention you had from your mother and being in a loving space without holding grudges, makes space for you paying that attention to yourself.

This is beautiful, I can really see now from this blog Natalie how chocolate and sweets are used to push away those uncomfortable feelings, but it’s actually those feelings that can take us to deep healing and liberate us from been controlled by hurts without even been aware of it.
It is ever so sweet and beautiful in the true meaning, your healing of your hurt with your mother!

This is lovely Julia. I was also struck by this sentence.It is beautiful to feel how old hurts can be healed and relationships renewed when we approach our life and our hurts from honesty and self responsibility.

On re-reading this blog Nathalie I am reminded of how my body use to respond when I ate chocolate. I would get itchy ears drums, I would feel super racy on the inside and then very flat after a while and I would look again for more chocolate. I would often wake up the next morning with a blocked nose and feeling very nauseous. Even though my body was speaking very loudly, it took 7 infections over a 12month period before I began to consider how my diet was affecting my immune system. Choosing to not eat chocolate, sugar,gluten and dairy has been a huge support to my health, in fact I have never felt more well.

I was so addicted to chocolate I didn’t know I was addicted. Eating a block a day became a regular part of my life I stopped questioning why, actually not sure I ever did question why? It was not till the teachings of Universal Medicine that I began to understand true care and slowly I started to notice the impact chocolate was having on me. Chocolate was my drug of choice, today love is.

When I try to give up something it has never worked. I can’t even quite describe what happens I just know that my body no longer wants something and then i don’t eat it. The thing is I can never know when my body will do this. With chocolate for example I knew that it made me feel snotty, thick in the throat, sleepy and dull but I would eat it while wanting to desperately to give it up. Then at some point I just stopped eating it, there was no more fight to keep eating it, want to have it or need for it.

It is the same for me too Sally Scott. I will eat something whether it is what my body needs or not and then all of a sudden, I can’t eat that thing anymore, which is very strange for me when I look back at when I was younger, and I lived for chocolates and sweet things to make my day more enjoyable. It’s amazing what choosing to listen to our bodies and some self loving care does.

Thanks Nathalie, I recently read an article that said the cause of addiction is not what we think it is, this was based on a study that concluded lack of connection with other people was the true cause and connection was the remedy. We have so much to learn about why we make the choices we do, and how to value the things we truly need in life as a basic foundation to live as a human being.

This makes a lot of sense, Melinda. Disconnection from ourselves and others hurts us the most because we no longer feel the love which naturally fills us from our head to our toes and energizes us through life. We then eat to fill the emptiness, to avoid the painful separation and as a false fuel to keep us going.

Yes, Janet, and why would we continue to choose that false fuel, knowing that our true fuel is so absolutely gorgeous and glorious? There are many factors to consider here, not all of them obvious.
I’ve often wondered how we can pass off as normal, the question, “What is your poison?” as though it is totally normal to have at least one poison, if not, several!
What’s the source of such thinking? It doesn’t feel normal or natural to me.

Yes Janet, eat, smoke, snort, inject, drink …we can find so many ways to numb the sadness we feel from not having that connection and love with our friends, family and community. If drug addiction was addressed in this way I suspect we would see a much more solid healing from addiction. Not simply abstinence but genuinely not needing to numb anymore

The first step for people is to feel that they want to stop eating chocolate. I spent decades thinking it was ok to eat a moderate amount of chocolate, that was my normal at that time. But when I wanted to cut down, the problem seemed to start. What you write is so revealing Melinda, we are slowly starting to realise that we’re looking in the wrong places for the solution. Willpower didn’t work at all, but looking at my choices in other areas of my life and connecting with my relationships made a huge impact, and I realised I didn’t need any chocolate at all anymore.

I love what you share here Melinda. I know from my own experience of developing awareness around my choices I can look back and see how much I overrode my feelings dismissing things as “that’s life” or “that’s just how it is” and feeling like I just had to put up with things. Really there is no wonder why there is so much depression, illness and disease because if my earlier approach to life is symptomatic to that of the rest of humanity, it explains a lot around the disharmony we face each day. My approach was very disempowering personally and contributed hugely to the level of disconnection I condoned everywhere. By not expressing honestly I was saying that the status quo was acceptable, that disharmony and worse was OK. It wasn’t really my lack of connection to others that was the issue, but the chasm in my own connection to me that prevented me from articulating the truth that led to the addictions to sugar and so on. When we feel empty then something else has to fill the void!

That deep Love we crave can only come from one source and that is within us. We can not fully feel and appreciate the Love another holds us in if we have not first connected to the stupendous love we carry within.

Thank you Natalie I don’t think you are alone on this. It is interesting and great to know that all that is needed in order to break free from an addiction such as this is to find the real sweetness we crave; the sweetness of caring for, loving and treasuring our self as we all truly deserve. Then these things just seem to drop away without even trying to give them up.

Lately I have been feeling that food has a more powerful affect on my state of mind than I have allowed myself to be aware of. Recently I discovered that I started having very negative thoughts after eating something that I could feel was stimulating and not supporting my body. I could feel that I had tried to use the stimulating food to ‘manage’ some anxiety I was feeling but it only made me 10x more anxious. When I allow myself to feel the truth my cravings for foods that don’t support my body just drop away.

This is a very powerful awareness you share Natalie “In the end it became very clear that this was a pattern that I no longer wanted in my life and so I started to make choices that helped me heal the hurts that had forever kept me imprisoned, a victim of my past.” This is the same choice I have come to with alcohol and numerous foods that don’t agree with my body and well-being. Choosing how I feel becomes the very clear choice when ultimately I have found that what I am consuming is physically hurting me equal to the emotional hurt I thought I was choosing to cover up.

Hello Nathalie Sterk and thank for this article on chocolate. I loved what you are saying about sugar and ‘sweets’ here as it is the same for me, “I became aware that I was getting more and more sensitive to sweets and I started to feel the effect the sugar had on my physical and emotional health.” and also, “When I went to bed I could feel my racy pulse and uneasiness inside, which made it hard to fall asleep.” The physically effect on my body with both of these is huge and I don’t ever remember being this aware of it. This is where it hit me hardest, in the how it makes me feel and why I choose not to use sugar and sweet like I have in the past, this is ongoing for me. Thank you again Nathalie.

Nathalie you remind me of my experience with chocolate. I was never that addicted to chocolate ( it was more the coffee and the cigarets which i successfully stopped before the chocolate) but i noticed that i was eating it every week even i knew it was not good for my body. I decided that i will not stop eating chocolate but i choose to learn from myself why i wanted to eat it.
I noticed two reasons why i wanted it. First if i didn’t take well care of my lunch during work. Then as a replacement i was looking for sugar. The other reason was more emotional. I notice that every time when i spoke to certain close people in my life i always wanted chocolate after. I told myself that it is oke to take it but i promised myself first to sit down and to feel what was going on. I felt that i was letting certain people bringing me down with the way they were talking to me. That i felt less after talking with them. And then i wanted the chocolate to sweeten myself. To feel better. To calm myself. The beautiful thing was that when i started to become aware of that and nominated that for myself while sitting with myself with having the chocolate on the table i didn’t feel to eat it anymore. Because i gave myself that moment of connection with myself and feeling that upset feeling inside of me and realizing that i should not be that upset because i am oke, i started to loose the interest to eat the sweetness. I became more and more myself again by just connecting with me, to feel my own sweetness. I did this 3 times and then i never ate chocolate anymore. It was not the goal but it happened anyway.

I’ve noticed that the term ‘choc-a-holic’ is often used so lightly and humorously in general conversation, which is designed to distract from the fact that it is actually an addiction. I was a sugar addict – seriously. And it absolutely controlled me for a huge chunk of my life, from a very young age until around 42 years old when I first started attending Universal Medicine presentations and receiving support from esoteric healing practitioners. When I trace back the origins of the addiction, it clearly stemmed from childhood hurts – from not being met as a child for the sweetness that I was, so I set about seeking sweetness from outside of myself to fill and numb the gapping hole and emptiness I felt on the inside. So the process of healing has involved getting honest about this and reconnecting with my body in a way that has enabled me to hear what it had been trying to show me for years – actually feeling how awful chocolate and sugar feels in my body. I’ve come such a long way in 5 years and I am learning to deeply appreciate this in myself, as well as accept, live, love and honour the most incredible sweetness that I naturally am.

What an awesome blog revealing how we use food to mask how we are feeling. I also used to do this with sugar and chocolate and am still working on how I use other foods to avoid what I have reacted to or don’t want to deal with. Our relationship with food is a big one with the ways we use it and ultimately abuse our bodies when in truth food is medicine and can be used in a very healing and nurturing way.

Thanks Nathalie, this is great to read, showing that will power is short lived, and ending any addiction comes from dealing with a hurt. The rollercoaster pattern you describe with chocolate and sweet food could be the same with someone with and addiction to alcohol or gambling for example, and you have shown the way to address these addictions is by being honest, addressing the hurts and reconnecting to your body, that is ..meeting yourself!. What a great program for anyone with addictions.

The part where you talk about how easy it is to say you will never eat it again when you have a belly full of it touched a chord with me. I say the same about nuts, which I have a physical reaction to but keep eating none the less. It’s so easy to say – that’s it, no more – when we have them tucked up in our body, but when the craving hits again, it’s a different story. It’s so true that eating what is no good for us stops us from feeling and being aware. and the joy of being able to feel, more than makes up for not eating those nuts which make my body run with so much mucus that you would think I had a bad cold. It makes no sense though, to eat anything if they are giving us a poor reaction or making us feel less than we are. Which indicates just how little we really care for our bodies, if we are willing to put them through that for a temporary hit of what feels nice in the moment, yet we suffer from the long term result in the body.

Nathalie what you’ve shared with Chocolate is something that I can apply to all areas of my life. There are often habits or addictions that I don’t want to be there. The focus before Universal Medicine and one that still can come up is wanting to “fix” that issue – the end result i.e. if I don’t eat Chocolate all will be great. Whereas what I’ve now come to understand, something that I’m constantly learning to apply, is to look at what is behind my reason for doing something and healing that. Then the desire for that habit or addiction naturally drops away and has no longer a hold. I’ve not reflected on this as much as I could have so its great to read your experience with Chocolate and what giving it up for good truly means. In many cases for me not wanting to feel some form of sadness or hurt has meant I’ve built up a plethora of patterns and tools to escape with. Great to see them for what they are, thank you.

Sugar, sweets, chocolate and many other foods simply numb and bring a false sweetness to life instead of feeling reality and choosing to live lovingly from within. This is an amazing realisation presented to us by Universal Medicine bringing the real knowing and healing possible for everyone. It has allowed a deeper understanding for our health, vitality and inner consistency and foundation to develop and live as a way of life. Thank you Nathalie for sharing what is going on, the why and the real choices we can make.

The incredible truth about our bodies is revealing itself here on these pages through this blog and all these comments. It seems very clear and apparent that the more care our bodies receive, the more we are able to listen to what they actually require, and this in turn gives us a vital body that is a joy to live with. This to me is worth giving up chocolate for.

It is lovely with what you have shared in that you didn’t give up chocolate to loose weight or out of self-loathing (to fix something), or to do with a mission but because you felt what it was doing to your body on a energetic (and physical level in being racy) level. It brings to home that we really do hold our health in our own hands, it is just a case of loving ourselves more.

The link between our emotions and food is recognised by virtually everyone but rarely given any proper respect in regard to changing our food habits. It makes perfect sense that a food such as chocolate is used to alleviate hurt we might feel as the smooth soothing aspect of the food combined with the mind altering effects of the sugar and caffeine make it a powerful choice. Being aware of this feels like the first step to addressing eating such foods, as knowing why we eat a food allows us to look more closely at the root cause and bring acceptance of ourselves and where we are into the equation. Comfort food is a quick fix but it doesn’t solve the problem and what I found is that over time the issues actually become more prevalent. Far better to face the hurt we feel and heal it than it is to smother it with food.

Great point Stephen, in fact when I first read the sentence that the link between emotion and food is recognised by virtually everyone I immediately told myself “no it’s not, we are still all eating chocolate” and then I remembered, oh wait the link actually IS recognised by everyone just we often disregard it and actually promote eating as a way to numb ourselves from the issues, but what we don’t realise is the damage that we are causing both by overloading the system with an amount of sugar it cant handle but also burying emotions within the body

Aaaah the secret habits of a chocoholic – I know them so well! I can relate hugely to your experiences, and the insatiable need for sugar to sweeten my life every second of the day. For me too it took many years of quitting and then conceding, until the consequences begun to get too bad to ignore and I would feel ill for days, and became obvious that my addiction was simply a symptom of something else wrong in m life. I can honestly say life without sugar feels so much cleaner and healthier.

Wow Abby, that’s intense, I was never a sugar addict, but I know how hard it was giving up smoking. I never fully grasped the seriousness of sugar addiction until this blog. This is extremely shocking as sugar is marketed enormously for all from babies up to the old, the affect it has on our bodies is detrimental to our wellbeing – is this legal poisoning?

I often notice how parents ignore their children, never intentionally, they get caught up in life and miss the queses, stop seeing that their children just want a moment of their time. Just to be met in the eyes and even a gentle touch, yet we get caught up thinking we are doing all the right things, getting them to sport, this and that event, going to work to earn money to buy all the things we think they need. Yet the one thing, the most important thing to be met, gets overlooked. And then we have chocolate to numb and bury the pain. Thank you Mr Cadbury, I wonder if you know what you do?

I agree Caroline this is happening in households all around the world. It means so much to feel loved and appreciated just for being you and it only takes a moment of bringing your full, undivided attention to your child and letting them in. This is true medicine, and chocolate? well that’s a very poor substitute. As adults it’s our responsibility to love ourselves in full so we don’t feel neglegted and empty and therefore craving –something to fill that gap.

This is so true Caroline. I definitely notice a change in my children’s behaviours when I don’t give them enough attention. They are very smart and they know when I am not giving them 100% full attention. Like you shared, it can be frequent moments of deep connection, in a smile, a gentle touch or simply stopping to appreciate them. Thank you for reminding me to do this more often. As I have observed, there can be devastating effects on people who haven’t been met as a child. I can see that it is equally harming feeling not met even as an adult.

I love your honesty here Nathalie – from your words, the ‘lure’ that chocolate once had feels so very strong, and then to read how you have transformed your relationship with it is very powerful. That you feel more ‘mentally stable and less emotional’, and more in tune with yourself and your body is a powerful testament to looking at any addictive behaviour that may be keeping us from such a deeper – and rewarding – relationship with ourselves.
Thank-you so much for sharing.

Oh Natalie I can so relate! Bizarrely I could taste the chocolate as I read the early part of your blog, so clearly it was a well known crutch for me too. I also hope this blog and the comments below inspire others to know it is possible, that once you build love in your day to day you can say goodbye to needing fake sweetness!

Great blog Nathalie thank you for your honest and open sharing. It shows that will power and denying ourselves something we crave is never the way to go but that we need to look at the root cause of the craving. I have struggled throughout my life with diets and addictions and am learning that the only way to truly let go of something is by healing my hurts and developing a deeply ovine and accepting relationship with myself.

Thank you Nathalie. It’s such an important topic, the addiction we have to certain foods and even drinks like Coffee. Unlike Alcohol and drugs, being addicted to food is so much sneakier, and easier to hide. People laugh it off as a silly vice, and not something that can actually be harming to your wellbeing. Eating for emoitional purposes is a habit for most of us. I know I have emotional ties with certain foods, namely sweet things for when I feel sad or lonely. It’s an illusion of comfort that we are often not willing to accept, for those very few moment of pleasure while we are eating something, can be very hard to give up…it’s like a crutch that helps you walk.
We definitely need to be having more conversations around emotional eating and what it’s actually doing to our health.

The role overeating played in my life was similar to the role of chocolate in this blog, yet very insidious to this day, as it can occur with any food, even healthy ones. The familial tendency to overeat and even compete at the table to finish what was in the serving bowl, was about wanting to please and receive recognition. Then, in later life, seeking recognition from food, as weird as it may seem, fuels the subtle continuance of the habit of overeating. To explain, choosing an abundance of food is choosing a quantity of food based on a tendency to not feeling complete within and therefore seeking an abundance from life as a substitute. With this understanding, there is empowerment brought to every meal, to eat to confirm my fullness and not eat to become full.

” I have definitely become more aware – more aware of my feelings, more in tune with my mind, my thoughts and reflections. I am learning to truly connect to my body and to honour the signals it gives me”
This is an awesome reflection of self awareness and self responsibility.
The transformation and choices you made are a great inspiration for one who also filled the void by eating sweet things.

Chocolate and sweet treats have been a big part of my life since being a young child. Now working with myself in healing, I can see that food generally and especially sweet treats became a real focus around the age of 6, to deny the fact that I was feeling unseen and unmet by my family at a time when my parents had separated not long after immigrating from South Africa to Australia. There became a compulsive quality to getting a bigger serving and having sweets.

As you say Nathalie, it is a gradual process, first substituting with unrefined sugars, gradually revealing the layers of the emotional hurts and feeling the effects on the body. For me it has taken a third treatment of Blastocystis gut parasite (which feed on sugars) to finally stop eating sugar because it is my responsibility to learn to truly and sensitively care for my digestive system.
A gift from my body I’d say because once it is not an option, there are a lot of benefits – stability of mind, no compulsive cravings, more connection with others, being able to feel more to name a few.

My addiction to chocolate came when I was young, I was probably given chocolate to make me quiet for a little while, but then I got addicted! There were some sad things that I felt during childhood and chocolate seemed to be the way to get happy. I remember always asking mum for a “yowie” or “kinder surprise” when going grocery shopping with her. Birthdays always had a box of chocolates and I remember one year not sharing them with anyone and getting into trouble!! Chocolate was good, the thought of it still seduces me a bit. But I know if I was to eat it I would feel sick, and I value my health and my clarity very much. Chocolate doesn’t win this time!

I love this Harrison “But I know if I was to eat it I would feel sick, and I value my health and my clarity very much. Chocolate doesn’t win this time!” There was too times when I was addicted to chocolate and would be desperate to have it however nowadays as I have far more appreciation for my body I know the consequences of what having chocolate feel like and I now no longer would choose to have the chocolate, a few moments of comfort, for a few days of feeling sick!

Having been a daily consumer of chocolate for many years of my life it is amazing to me that today, and for a few years now, the temptation to eat it has completely gone from me. I don’t even recall when I gave it up because it wasn’t really about the chocolate as you have expressed Natalie. It was about healing the hurts and the sense of emptiness I had within me and when I did so the desire for chocolate and many other things simply dissolved. To me, this is a result of connecting more deeply to who I am within rather than seeking a solution without. Having done so has revealed how much of a ‘junkie’ I was for anything that would numb me to the pain of my hurts. Healing those hurts is truly amazing and it is through my association with Universal Medicine that I have been able to do so. Thank you Natalie for your blog.

Richard, I can really relate to what you say here as my experience was similar. It took me some years to not crave chocolate and during that time I went from having milk chocolate, to dark chocolate to pure chocolate – just the beans! I was trying to give up chocolate ‘from my head’ and not from my body so even after going up the beans I was still tempted to have a dairy-free chocolate bar on occasions. Like you, it was not until I healed “the hurts and the sense of emptiness I had within me ” that “the desire for chocolate and many other things” miraculously dissolved.

Great comment Richard, so true. I can totally relate to what you’ve shared. By healing my hurts and recognising my harmful behaviours it enabled me to really make truly loving choices. I have used food for comfort and now my relationship with food has completely changed. Because I no longer crave for comfort in food and this is due to me attending the Universal Medicine workshops and presentations to heal my hurts and issues I have held onto. Once layers and layers of pain, sadness and deep hurt were released I was more able to make loving choices. The need for comfort just naturally and effortlessly dissipated.

Natalie this is an awesome expose of chocolate and sweet addiction and how dependent we can become on ‘sugar’. But as you share the dependency goes deeper than a physical addiction, it is an emotional addiction to cover the hurts that we do not want to feel….I’ve never been such a sweet tooth person so to speak, but I certainly have had addictions such as ‘smoking’ and that really was pretty much the same reasons – to swallow discomfort, tension, hurts, to swallow expression…the things we do to ourselves to not feel. Thanks to the teachings and love of Universal Medicine I started to find the courage and will to start looking at my hurts and how I have held myself back in life, how I have used addictive behaviours to keep me imprisoned… Although it was not that long ago, I am no longer that person, driven by underlying hurts but a person who is more and more connected to the love within and inspired to live more of me each day, bringing awareness to this, addictions begin to drop of naturally!

Wow Natalie, I never really understood that ‘chocolates and sweets’ could be actually addictive and offer so much cover up from our internal turmoil, hurts and so forth from what we may not want to feel. So we swallow this discomfort down with sweets that give us a temporary reprieve from something deeper within wanting us to pay attention to it because what’s down there is an opportunity for healing, and liberation, although it is often extremely uncomfortable at the beginning. Society markets and sells sugar in many disguises like there is no tomorrow, on a grand scale society is saying – cover up, cover up, eat sugar and all things nice and you will feel better, and then just eat more and more, everyone wins, you get a hit of sugar, your discomfort is numbed for another day, and we can all falsely be happy in the moment; the businesses get an injection of money, great arrangement, but society does not add in the small print,the warnings of what sugar really does to you, the effect it has on your body, your emotional wellbeing. When I talk about society, I am not talking about something out there, but all of us, each one of us makes up society!

Very well said Karoline, equally those that put out reports that certain foods are good for us, when they well know the high sugar content and what in truth it does to us should be held accountable, this should be a criminal offense. When you think of the billions effected how can it not be.

Chocolate seems to be such an innocuous substance that it is often not seen as a real addiction. However, as Natalie shares here, it is still a means to soothe and numb away the pain of hurts, and so is used as an avoidance of what is truly bothering us.
The addictions I had ( not chocolate ) just naturally passed on as I became more honest in listening to my body and in expressing my needs and my feelings. I found that, with a certain level of well being, there was no choice to be made: the addiction no longer fitted with how I was. Hence, addictions are truly substances we use to maintain an unhealthy status quo, in my experience.

This is a brilliant take on addictions: ‘substances we use to maintain an unhealthy status quo…as an avoidance of what is truly bothering us’. With this insight I am more willing to peek behind my behaviours (which can also be addictions) to develop a deeper understanding of why I still let certain things play out in my life. Thank you, Coleen.

Chocolate can be such a hard food to kick, and many would say why on earth would you…? But for me chocolate was a sure fire way to have ugly tantrums and mood swings. It took me a while to give it up too, with many slip ups, but now I have been chocolate free for 20 years, and I will never go back. It doesn’t take any willpower, because even though chocolate might taste amazing, I know it will bring me pain and suffering in the form of the emotional tantrums (I don’t know how my husband put up with me!)

Good point Heather. I hadn’t appreciated the absence of mood swings in my life but this is true for me too. If we use chocolate to lift our mood then it is surely the case that when the affect of the chocolate wears off we have a corresponding dip in mood too. Then what? More chocolate? Fights with our partners? Something else to change how we feel? Until we shift the focus to dealing with what is within us it seems this is a roller-coaster we are destined to ride.

A great point Heather, you may have an initial high from chocolate but the low you get after possibly, not so much. We often do not want to see food as a consequence of our moods and mood swings but they really do have an impact. Same as there are an increased amount of fights after a sporting event due to the low many experience after their team losing, so too are there many fights after we experience a low from our food choices.

Thank You for your sharing and your honesty Nathalie ! Although my self – Meditation was not sweet, I resonate deeply with your story. And yes, as you say the only way through is facing that deep deep hurt, which Of course requires courage! COUR-AGE !

Nathalie, I can really relate to your blog and giving up chocolate many times. There was no discipline in the world that was strong enough for me to give up chocolate – for me it was how I felt afterwards and the long lasting impact on how I was feeling after having chocolate. Immediately after having chocolate I would be in a spin and feel my chest go tight from the combination of caffeine and sugar, I was unfocused, scattered and my mood changed – I felt more irritable and agitated. I did not like this feeling but what I really did not like was the depression that came afterwards, for days afterwards life would feel like a much bigger effort, I had more negative thoughts and the effect could last up to a week. The correlation between the chocolate and this experience was clear to me so when I really did not want to feel like that anymore I gave up chocolate and it has not been discipline it has been a choice to not want to feel awful for days on end. After I gave up chocolate I started to notice sugar was having the same effect and again I was able to give up sugar not so much from feeling unwell physically even though it gave me a headache, the clincher was the negative impact on my emotional well-being and how this affected how I felt about everything else.

wonderful to read an article about being liberated from the tenacious clenches of chocolate… I used to look in astonishment at the enormous slabs of chocolate that people would have in their shopping trolleys… I used to think that the big blocks of Cadbury chocolate, about the size of a novel, were enormous, when I was a kid, now they sell than 10 times that size, and people eat them, along with enormous cups of coffee, and then wonder why they are on an emotional rollercoaster. Neurologically it is also very interesting to note the addictive qualities of these substances as well… There is a lot to let go of.

It is staggering to me that chocolate and biscuits are so obviously sold as rewards or comforts, as if we deserve it because we have had a hard day or we are missing intimacy. For me this illustrates how strong the ‘consciousness’ or ‘cultural sway’ is concerning comfort foods and their place in current society. I am sure most of us can relate a story when we ate something because we felt a bit tired, sad or bored, what are we attempting “giving up chocolate for good has allowed me to know that no amount of chocolate can ever fill up the void or drown out the sadness of childhood experiences.” This is the truth of why we eat these foods and how it can be resolved.

It seems exaggerated to say the damage chocolate does to us but when we consider our relationships and how they are affected by the food we eat it is actually no exaggeration at all. The picture Natalie describes of not being met by a mother burying herself in the comfort of chocolate creates the knock on effect that she then looks for that same sweet comfort, it is a cycle that never ends unless we break it with the power of self love. Making choices that heal the body and arrest the damaging choices that otherwise become our norm.

I love reading about the delicacy and power that is in our hands as we accept and appreciate responsibility for our lives. Cycles of ill behaviour continue until such time as we choose to open our eyes and arms to ourselves, lovingly and honestly so, breaking the repetition of unloving patterns and behaviours. Beautifully put, Nathalie and Stephen.

Wow, thank you for this awesome blog. It gave me an insight into how addictive chocolate is. It is so beautiful to read how you have overcome this addition and is so honest and open in sharing this. I am sure many people who are also addicted to chocolate will find your blog revealing. There is so much for everyone to truly see the hold chocolate can have on people’s life. It is a very accepted form of comfort that many of us would never consider it to be harmful. I was very mildly addicted to cakes but not so much sweets and chocolate. Giving up refined sugar for me was therefore fairly easy once I decided to choose self-love. I decided over 2 years ago experimenting with giving up Gluten, dairy and caffeinated tea. I didn’t drink alcohol or coffee so I decided to try giving up the 4 major foods that I felt was harming my body. My experiment is now permanent. There is no way I would go back to consuming sugar, dairy, gluten or caffeinated tea because from these choices I now feel absolutely amazing. There is no way I would compromise how I feel for tasty but harmful foods. These loving choices I have made have been inspired by people I met at Universal Medicine and thank you God for this blessing.

I love how this shows us that it becomes our choice to be honest with ourselves and face what is going on underneath the chocolate fix. It is proven that chocolate (sugar) is more addictive that Cocaine in the body and so easy to see how it becomes impossible to quit or break the cycle by using will power alone. Feeling how the body feels by eating sugar I know is the only break for me in that cycle. Feeling the burnt throat and blisters on my tongue, the raciness, snappiness with my family, and the inability to feel the tenderness of life. Instead of feeling the truth of what is going on…. Hmmm the choice seems incredibly simple when it’s honestly seen.

Great blog Natalie, I can still feel the sweetness in the photo at the top (Though I would rather have had dark chocolate, or those cocoa covered truffles…! I no longer eat chocolate but there is still, occasionally, a desire to. I wonder sometimes if that ever goes. “Chocolate gave me great comfort when I felt alone, unloved and not met for just being me. What I really craved was to be truly met and deeply loved.” This is definitely true for me too. Like many things I probably eat more chocolate in the year before I started to give up, than ever. Then I went to 90% dark chocolate (no diary, little sugar, that’s the one I still fancy now and again, if I see and smell it right in front of me. Great expose of why we want these things, the what is behind it.

I agree Shirley-Ann, it’s a really important point about why many choose to eat chocolate, or other foods which are proven to be not good for you – Nathalie has provided some insight here, about how it was when she felt alone or not loved that she reached for these comfort foods. If we can realise why we are doing things, that could possibly free us up to choose differently instead of just go to our default habit

I have no doubt that I used chocolate to not feel, I used sweets for exhaustion after school from the age of about 9, and only really got into chocolate later. I still used it for comfort and numbness to not feel, as I look back on it. I felt deeply a sadness about the state of humanity and having missed myself as I came back to me about 10 years ago. Today I understand that numbing my sadness will not fix anything, I need to feel the truth, the lovelessness underneath it if I do become aware of sadness, then I can let it go. I can feel right now what the ill effect would be on my body, my amazing clarity and focus, if I went down the chocolate road again, and that is enough to stop me. I love feeling like this! Chocolate, you are a thing of the past.

Thank you for this great blog sharing your relationship with chocolate and the addictive nature of that. The ” loving care for myself and my well-being” seems the key factor here. I know that for myself I need a loving dedication to my own self-care and well-being in order to say no to foods that I know are not supporting me in my evolution.

So true when you say that no amount of chocolate will ever drown the sadness or fill the void inside, and nor can anything else we put in our mouth for that matter. I love your detailed observations on what worked and what didn’t work or only worked for a little while when you could feel that it was time to let go of this crutch that was so obviously weighing you down and harming you.

What a wonderful and honest sharing of what your journey has been with chocolate. I am sure there are many who can relate to this, myself included. It is amazing what behaviours arise in us to not allow us to feel what is really going on. Plus the fact that it isn’t most of the time a black and white situation that can just be switched on or off. It does take time unpacking this process for each of us and I have found that it is in bringing a love for oneself in this process, certainly helps.

I love your honesty in this blog. I still occasionally use sugar to add some sweetness to my life to numb or checkout of life then beat myself up for it even though I know nothing l put into my body will heal the hurts I have been holding on to or fill the emptiness inside of me. Honesty with myself and taking responsibility for the way I live and what is going on within me is the only true way to live. I am learning more and more to reconnect to myself and feel the fullness of me and in that state sugar is the last thing I want.

What I loved about your story, Nathalie, was I did not feel any residue of hurt in your relationship with your mum. This is super inspiring in a world that is still so keen to avoid responsibility and find someone else to blame. To read about your ‘deeper understanding, love and connection’ in this relationship is a real tribute to your willingness to be the responsible, understanding and super sweet (not toothed!) woman that you are. Thank you.

What I find quite profound about this blog Nathalie is the connection that you describe between sugar cravings and the intimacy of our relationships, from my observation that is undoubtedly a connection between the two. I often see in young people who feel lonely or just as if they have not been met that they often turn to food and sugar to relief this. I mean it is no surprise that during a breakup the stereotypical thing to do is mourn with the relief of eating your way through mountains of chocolate, ice-cream, and sweets etc. I also found for myself that it was only when I started to actually address relationships that I could start to address my food choices without feeling like something was constantly holding me back

I too was a chocoholic for many years and when I stopped having chocolate I went on to have chocolate substitutes, other sweet and creamy substances. It was better I told myself because it was dairy free, gluten free and refined sugar free. It took a while for me to start noticing I was using it to mask issues I did not want to look at just as I was using the chocolate. In fact there are myriads of ways we can adopt to do this. But as you say no amount of this behaviour really fills up the void or drowns out the issues. Sooner or later we have to face them.

I can relate very well to this Golnaz. We are so cunning when trying to fool ourselves.
Finally choosing to look at the cause instead of putting endless effort into masking the effects and hurts will make us take responsibility and free ourselves from this addicition.

I can relate with what you share here Golnaz, and as you say regards eating chocolate and its substitutes, ‘no amount of this behaviour really fills up the void or drowns out the issues. Sooner or later we have to face them.’ Why am I craving these substances, what are they giving me that is missing from my life, what am I not wanting to feel?

This blog is great because it doesn’t make out it is easy or a straight road letting go of something you are addicted to. Equally it shares clearly that it can be a letting go and once you have dealt with the hurt that is underneath it all then it is in fact simple and the need does disappear. Beautifully shared.

On re-reading this blog I am reminded of how I can use food to dull myself when I feel really lovely or when I have had a day that has been so beautiful that everything has gone my way. I am slowing allowing myself to look at what is underneath this choice to numb myself when I feel amazing.

When a level of love and self care reaches a certain point in the body, it cannot but reduce or stop the choices like eating chocolate, smoking or even over-eating. I have spent too much time trying to give up all sorts, but it always comes back to the self care and connection I have with me that supports to kick these habits. Walking, breathing, or just looking at the food and feeling what it gives, this is never wrong. Can I override these impulses, absolutely yes, but the consequences are fairly instant in the body.

Beautifully expressed Matthew. I have used ‘willpower and determination and discipline’ in the past to give things up but never has it lasted and always it has felt harsh. Nowadays say you say – the more I appreciate and honour myself, and take super daily care of me, the more these habits or things that are abusive drop away. Thank God for Universal Medicine – as without having met Serge Benhayon I would not have realised the simplicity and truth of this, and that our body knows best.

Sweet and milky chocolate is a great soother, and clearly as you describe, it was a substitute for not being met and seen for the sweet little girl you were. The magic ingredient was when you started to appreciate your own delicacy and sweetness already in your body, the need for that substitute fell away. So simple really in what feels like an endless desire.

Chocolate brought me a lot of comfort in the past when I felt lonely. Your blog shows that once we let go of our hurts we stop using the very thing that we chose to keep us away from feeling it. I notice I can still use certain foods to avoid issues but the issues don’t go away, they are only dulled and numbed down. As soon as I choose to be responsible for what I am feeling, I am better equipped to deal with whatever comes up and let it go.

It seems that all our addictions are linked to our lack of self love. Mine was taking refuge in books. I needed to escape by reading, to be somewhere else in my head to avoid the hurt and discomfort of living with myself. I still read but books somehow do not have the same hold on me. The craving has somehow slipped off me like a garment I no longer need. For this I thank Universal Medicine and its teaching.

Thank you for your very honest account of giving up chocolate, I’ve found when we don’t deal with our underlying hurts, that we are trying to avoid with addictive behaviours, that its not possible to let go of the behaviours permanently.

Its beautiful and worth celebrating, when one chooses to embrace oneself as worthy of loving and caring for. What happens thereafter is nothing short of incredible, and the destructive behaviours that we were choosing for ourselves, simply start dropping away effortlessly, as they don’t fit this ‘new’ body, full of love.

It is so easy to choose other sweet things instead of chocolate, but to still be with the same intention that chocolate brings. I am learning that although certain foods do have a genuine effect on my body that I do not like, there is also the responsibility for choosing to be ware of how or why I eat.

I haven’t eaten chocolate for the last 7 years. The other day I ate a snack bar that contained a tiny percentage of cocoa in it. I felt racy about half an hour after eating it, and the next day I felt hungover! It is such strong stuff, and my body showed me the true evil of it.

Thanks for your honest sharing re your chocolate addiction and your journey in how you finally gave it up.
I too loved chocolate when growing up and into my adult life. I used it as a comfort when I was feeling down, and a reward after a long day at work. However, it caused me to feel racy and I couldn’t sleep at night.
I also suffered hypoglycaemia because of it. Since giving it up I feel so much more calm, have more lasting energy and sleep better at night.

What you highlight here is how, when our ‘treat’ intake is restricted, once we are liberated, we then gorge ourselves unreasonably. When it comes to sugar I decided to give it up, but my body was exhausted and I really wasn’t ready, so that meant, if my will power failed, as it often does, I would go overboard with my eating, not just more fruit but actual cake-type foods as well. I’m learning to take more care of my body so that it is not so exhausted so that I’m not actually craving the sugar – then the change will be permanent – before I was treating the symptoms not the cause.

There are so many real life stories on these sites of people kicking one habit or another, not through willpower and focussing on resisting the temptation, but through simply feeling who they truly are and living according to that connection to the body. If we pay close enough attention to our bodies, it becomes clear what to eat and not eat or drink, exercise, sleep, etc. Through my connection to myself, I have let alcohol, gluten, dairy, salt, sugar and more, just fall away without any willpower and I have never felt better; many thanks to the support from Universal Medicine, because my willpower was never going to cut it!!

I agree Heather the body tells us in many different ways that sugar is not good for us, we choose to ignore these signs because we want to continue to indulge in foods that do not agree with us just so we can avoid what we are feeling.

I can remember when I was really little, vowing that when I got money I would buy as much chocolate as I wanted. So my relationship with chocolate as a comfort food goes way back. It wasn’t that hard to give up in the end because it made me feel awful, however the pull of sweet things is still there. Gradually I am uncovering the hurts I have not wanted to feel and gently unravelling their hold on me. The more this happens the less those sweet things are on my mind. It is less about will power and more about steady commitment to myself.

“What I really craved was to be truly met and deeply loved.”
It’s still a work in progress for me to have chocolate drop away from my diet and this is because I’m still learning and allowing to truly meet myself and deeply love myself.

Thank you, Nathalie, for sharing so honestly how we can use foods, particular sweet things, to smother how we are truly feeling. Food is such a powerful drug to keep us numb from our feelings as we need food to survive but we can be so unaware of the harm it is doing to us at the same time.

“Sugar was my way of sweetening up my life”. I can so relate to this Nathalie. When I was at boarding school we were allowed to bring in sweets from home and then have 4 a day after lunch. It was this connection with home, and live, that initiated my desire for chocolate when I felt ‘less than’ in later life. The warmth I felt was more than just the sweet taste in my mouth. What was missing was the love for myself. Now that I have more self regard and self love, I no longer crave sweets. They just fell off the agenda a few years ago now, which seemed like a miracle at the time.

What is kind of funny is how chocolate is advertised as being the thing to reach for after a break up or bad day or as a reward. How many movies show the heroine binge eating chocolate and ice cream after her boyfriend has dumped her? Its a totally normal response these days, and yet no one is considering the effect this is having on the body, or if perhaps the underlying reason for this behaviour is chocolate, or dairies ability to numb us and stop us feeling what we don’t want to feel.

A great blog about how ‘giving up’ a habit doesn’t have to be about fixing a problem, but just choosing what’s best for your body at that time. I have found in my life that if I try and do it from getting a ‘solution’, there always tends to be something else to fill the void that giving up the first habit has left behind

When I eat something sweet now I feel the same way I did when I would take drugs or drink alcohol while at school or work. I feel self-conscious and out of my body and I feel paranoid that others can feel how racy and disconnected I am (which of course they can). All of this makes me feel very uncomfortable and I can feel the rampage of my sweet tooth is coming to an end as the 10 seconds of sweetness is just not worth it.

Natalie this blog is so powerful in its honesty. Sugar addiction is a struggle experienced by many (myself included). While we eat the sugar to sweeten life and not feel, the fact that we keep doing it is only adding to the misery.

I can relate to your honest blog on the addiction of chocolate or sweets to not feel an older hurt, very much. Beautiful how you have described your way of quitting chocolate or better to say how you have healed your hurts, that let you eat the chocolate. My experience is also that I have the willpower more or less to quit sweets, but this is not the solution at all. It always stays as a tension in my body and surely seeks another solution to not feel the hurt. And I always find a way here. Adding the bad conscience afterwards to accomplish the vicious circle. So definitely to heal the hurts is the way to quit any addiction what so ever. The modalities and teachings of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine are the best support to truly heal and evolve.

It’s been a while since I have linked food not only to weight and maybe a bloated stomach from eating too much but to now knowing it alters my behaviours! This has taken a while to really feel the results of the food choices and the subtle changes and messages the body then feeds me back that are not supportive.

It is amazing to begin to feel in our bodies how certain foods can affect our behaviours! This has been very revealing for me, I have felt the effect a banana or even a small cup of de-caff coffee has had on me, almost the same feeling as having a small glass of wine ! And when I go to eat or drink these things I ask myself, what is it that I don’t want to feel? This is where self love comes in, how long do I continue to disregard and override my feelings to delay my own evolution by not truly supporting my body. This is an ongoing process for me, refining and refining my diet and listening to my body as once I have the awareness to feel the subtle changes there is really now excuse anymore !

It’s funny, chocolate was never my thing, yet your statement “Sugar was my way of sweetening up my life’ – still highly resonates with me. I just used other things to sweeten up, or stimulate my life. Emotions, alcohol, other foods, all to make my life more interesting. But over time I have realised that it is never sweetened up by any of those things, in fact it takes away from life, in so many ways.

Great comment Raegan as any food used to sweeten things up certainly does impact on life. If I use food as a reward or to sweeten my day the rest of my day will be dull, I can be moody, not wanting to be with people and I wake up feeling crap.

This is a very revealing blog Nathalie – and what I have learned from your story and the comments that we are all so very much the same at so many levels, including many of our past addictions and the various reasons that we chose to allow them to occur. I can relate to many of the similarities in the comments and feel there has been much support and awareness developed as a result of our choice to attend the presentations of Universal Medicine, thus getting a handle on as to why we chose these particular foods. I feel there is much value in so many of us sharing our unfolding and awarenesses as to unravelling why it was that we turned to sugar, dairy and chocolate specifically in so many cases. Now I am wondering, if smoking cigarettes, tobacco and all the associated products is similar – then I would love to have somebody share their unfolding story around their past habit of or addiction to ‘smoking’ – is it similar, is it the past childhood memories or hurts, emotions or beliefs – and why is it so difficult for some that I know to let go of. Just a thought to open the conversation along this parameter, as I feel that I have learned much by reading everyone’s experience of turning to those other things of which we have just shared.

Whether it is chocolate addiction or any other addiction- coffee or smoking- to just quit the habit from will power will not result in true healing. Only when we are honest and ready to deal with our hurts can we then kick the harming behaviour of addiction. A genuine Commitment to self healing is needed .
Thank you Natalie for sharing your personal journey with chocolate addiction, and how you were finally able to give it up.

I feel that we need the sweet because we lost touch with our own sweetness. Young children don’t ask for sweets, they get to know sweets and chocolate because at some point it is offered to them for comfort, reward or to ease the pain. Once you start eating it, you are hooked and you want more. That is the addiction that sugar is.

I agree Mariette, children don’t miss sugar and sweets until they are introduced to them- usually as a reward by well-meaning parents or grand-parents etc. Recent research shows the effect of sugar on the brain is similar to that of cocaine – that is shocking, yet understandable on account of sugar’s addictive nature.

It’s true children don’t need or miss sugar and sweets until they are introduced to them. And, an experience I had with a young child shows they understand the effect sugar has on them – when I explained to him how his behaviour had changed from eating a lollie he was given, he agreed to not eat the second one until after his dinner later in the day if he still felt like doing so. On the way home he fell asleep in the car and I noticed something in his pocket. It was the 2nd lollie. He totally got it and had chosen for himself not to eat it.

I so agree, children have no idea of sweet, until we adults introduce it to them . They are none the wiser, they play and enjoy being a child. It is us adults who bring in sweets and tempt them. Once children get the flavour they then get use to sweet and start to expect it. So it is for us adults to understand why we have chosen to eat sweet things and what comfort are we getting in eating them. Something to really ponder on.

This is a beautiful way of looking at it Mariette. And so true too! When we substitute sugar for our own sweetness we are making a choice that will always leave us short of what we truly want which is our own sweetness and deliciousness inside. Hence the true answer to addictions are inside us

So true Nathalie, nothing that we seek in or from the outside can fill the emptiness that we constantly feel inside of us until we are more and more living and expressing who we truly are instead of a living a role in a stage that is written and directed by ourselves.

Sugar is like cocaine or any other drug or alcohol, it gives us a false sense of reality. We get a temporary lift or step away from truth and think we are doing fine, we are where we want to be, cossetted by whatever substance we choose. It takes a lot of dedication to free oneself of this desire and say no to the assumed easy way out. Great blog Natalie and an amazing testament to your own dedication and devotion to your true self.

I have never had any recreational drugs, but chocolate was my drug of choice, The impact that it had on my body was an absolute high and addiction. Lots of people tell me that they are not addicted to caffeine or sugar. I ask them to give it up for a week and see how they feel.

Too many of us use sugar to fill ourselves up because we feel the void inside that is unbearable. And it works….. for a while because, the void being still there, we need more sugar….. Working on our hurts and feeling our self-worth and self-love with Universal Medicine is helping so many to reconnect to the beauty and amazingness that we all are.
Thank you Nathalie, your honesty is deeply felt.

That is so true Maryline, Universal Medicine has helped so many people already to reconnect to their own glory and power, so no longer any need for sweets and chocolates to numb the loneliness and emptiness.

” I have definitely become more aware – more aware of my feelings, more in tune with my mind, my thoughts and reflections. I am learning to truly connect to my body and to honour the signals it gives me”
What a very powerful story Natalie, your honesty is inspirational.
I can certainly relate to your word about sugar sweetening up your life and that it is a difficult habit to kick.
I can really appreciate you taking responsibility to overcome your chocolate/sugar addiction.

Sugar for me was definitely a favourite when I was younger but probably not as much as salt later on, so I would pride myself on not having as much of a sweet tooth as others, but not realizing that the salt was having the exact same racy effect on my nervous system as the sugar and still a form of numbing or not wanting to feel the emptiness I was covering.

I am also going through a process of getting zo understand what certain food is doing to me. I realized that certain foods have to do with certain patterns and behaviours and certain thoughts. So if you are ready to give up the food you are probably ready to give up the pattern.

This is the gold for me – “The actual journey of ‘giving up chocolate and sweets’ however took many years, going through a lot of trial and error, because it all came from a need to ‘fix’ the problem rather than from choosing a genuine and loving care for myself and my wellbeing. ”

I have been amazed at what changes come, not from trying to fix problems but from focusing on taking loving care of yourself.

Such is the illusion we all live in, that food that tastes great (but is awful for the health of the body) has to be okay at some level, i.e. don’t I deserve a treat or a reward, life is too short for bad coffee and all the research done that tells us chocolate has health benefits, mean it can often take some time to eliminate a food like chocolate from our diets. This is because it is not actually the food we are addressing, but the underlying issues that have us thinking a food that floods our bodies with a high, to only then leave us at the mercy of the inevitable low, is a good thing!

Thank you for sharing your story with us Nathalie. So many people have sugar addictions and don’t really have an awareness around why. I grew up mostly without sugar and my mother was very strict about lollie intake. I never really developed a love for chocolate, I hated ice-cream and fizzy drink so when did my need for sugar step in? Around my early twenties I introduced sugar into my life and it was a constant until I started attending sessions and workshops with Serge Benhayon at around 32. I started to notice the effect sugar was having on me and that I ‘needed’ it at certain times. It was like a crutch, a go to when I wanted to smother what I was feeling. Ah the quick fix, with the terrible kick back after effect! It definitely dropped away as I started making more loving food choices, and now refined sugar is no longer a part of my life.

“My journey with giving up chocolate and sweets has been quite a rollercoaster, spanning more than half a decade.”
My goodness, only half a decade, I thought, when I first read this … I’m delighted to read that the struggle with chocolate and sugar is being overcome at an early age in your life. It’s great to know it can be done and to not have to live the chocolate-or-not-chocolate-rollercoaster for all of one’s life, as I (and many others) have done. I’m 57yo now and only recently have broken the struggle with chocolate and sugar, by staying in my body and actually truly deeply feeling the physical effect it has on my body – it’s not good! I cannot stand the increased heart rate, the breathlessness, the flustered feeling, the zipping-along nervous system, the inability to concentrate, the inability to not take on other people’s emotions … is that enough listing of some of the effects?! Are we over chocolate now? Yes we are. And next time round, I hereby declare, that sugar and chocolate will not even get a look-in in my body, it is no longer needed to numb myself this and next time. 🙂

Nathalie you shared how you ‘were soothed and numbed by chocolate”. Is it possible that chocolate is just one form we use and that there are many others that still numb our hurts but come under another name?…. Your blog is such a true account of how we can connect to our true sweetness within.

Recently I have become aware of the fact that my food choices – especially the ones made out of a need to be comforted – are an after-effect of the choices I had been making all up to that moment when suddenly only something sweet will do. This makes me stop and really consider the spaces in-between all those food cravings and to take responsibility for how I am with myself, this includes the thoughts that I have and how I move my body.

Nathalie this is a really great inspiration for everyone to relate to in our own way and so inspiring to understand and feel what is really going on with our addictions and numbing ways of living and getting by in life. This then allows a true responsibility for ourselves and a deep understanding of why and gives us a choice to change things. The responsibility and joy of empowerment for ourselves can only be positive and very confirming for our health, vitality and life as a whole way of living. Thank you for this great sharing on sugar and chocolate and all this brings up. Sugar has been my addiction always from a child and I am working on it also and it is so amazing to feel less controlled by it and so much more presence and clarity as a result.

With the title of this blog “Giving up chocolate – for good”, it reminded me of all the articles out there that help to ‘fix’ your ‘problem’, whether that’s with chocolate, dieting, relationship advice, you name it. But your blog brings a totally different perspective to this topic, with not offering any solutions which is actually very freeing.

Great what you share here Jessica and very true, no solutions are being offered while we live in a world that is always about solutions. It shows how we don’t want to stop and take a moment to have a honest look in what is going on, but instead we start to look for sollutions so we don’t have to deal with the real issue at hand.

Food is such a big thing in our lives that really takes honesty to let go of food that does not support our body. Our body is constantly letting us know what foods make us feel tired, or exhausted and those that give us vitality. When we honestly listen to these messages and feel what the foods are doing to us, it becomes easier to let them go. When we ignore the messages it is easy to override our feelings with eating foods which are not supportive.

I too finally discovered that trying to fix a problem, like eating too much chocolate or drinking too much wine etc, that the quick fix approach may have worked for a while, but it didn’t take too long before the “problem” was back again, and often in an even bigger form. It was only when I made the decision to begin to look after myself more lovingly than I had ever done, and in doing so realising that my body’s wisdom was huge and eternal, that my “problems” naturally began to disappear, and as a result the level of my emotional, mental and physical well being grew to a whole new, and very welcome, level.

As Serge Benhayon has shared, in the world of energy there is no ‘NO’ there is only ‘YES’. So, what are we saying YES to when we become sugar addicts? We say yes to avoid being with us. We say yes to our feelings that we are not worth it and to every single reason why being with us is not our choice. So, it is not about the chocolate itself which might taste amazingly in the mouth. It is about what we are doing with it and why. Only if we go there we can renounce it and let it go.

This is so true Eduardo.
I avoided being with me for years and it wasn’t just chocolate I was saying yes to. Its amazing how long we can go on saying yes to the wrong energy and just ignore the discomfort we are feeling in our bodies as result of this yes.

I used to love chocolate. After a long time of not eating it because I just didn’t want it, I had some and it was an intense experience. I have always liked sweet things so it was quite shocking to find out how horrible chocolate actually is. I felt very anxious during the sugar high then I crashed in the low that followed. It was a real marker for me to see how far I had come. In the days when I enjoyed it, I must have been very anxious all the time, may be even depressed and in lethargy to not notice how intense it was. There is not a drop of will power in my words when I say that I will never eat chocolate again, because I love myself so much more.

Thank you, Jinyo, for describing the anxiousness that was there with eating sugar … I too feel that and yet am still eating it but am becoming so much more aware of the anxious state I’m in when having it … and am at the point of “what on earth am I doing?”. And yes noticing the times of lethargy too.

What I observed in my eating chocolate was how it stopped me from really feeling how I was. The act of eating chocolate was a choice I made to dull down my awareness of what was occurring and the effects of the caffeine distorted my outlook as it made me racy and quite high, followed by a crash. If we consider that our body has a natural homeostasis what I was doing was dragging my body further away from that natural state into a temporary elevation that was always followed by a fall and a much less well state of being. In short, life without chocolate is much sweeter. Thanks for your writing Nathalie.

Me too. It is always a choice, for me it is now not really ever about the taste or pleasure of eating something sweet, it is more about the choice to depart from what I am feeling, or to stop myself feeling something I know is about to happen that I do not want to feel. However the results now are so strong that I end up feeling way worse than I would by just feeling what is going on.

What I feel with this blog is the absolute beauty of personal development. To be developing true depth and beauty in your life and moving away from the toxic poison of sugars and having your life filled with more love, self care and feelings of fulfillment from truly understanding yourself is amazing. It really goes to show how incredible your way of living is, one that is open to of development yourself and opening up to greater ways of being in the world.

It was only after choosing to no longer drink alcohol that the real addiction showed itself to me. After nearly 25 years of dependency on alcohol the real culprit I discovered was the sugar that laced every sip. Ultimately, neither I am a victim to. The choice is and has always been, mine to truly love and care for myself or not, moment by moment, day by day.

After my second session with Serge Benhayon I realized it was the sugar in the alcohol that I was addicted to not the alcohol itself. This was a huge revelation at the time and made total sense as I was always tired and depressed and when I drank I got my sugar hit soI did not feel as tired.

Thank you Natalie for this awesome honest sharing. I can rely onto all this what you have described having sweet teeth. What I have found as an incredible huge the point, when you have made the decision no longer to be the victim of the past and this chocolate addiction. You started to make choices that helped you heal the hurts that had forever kept you imprisoned. This is huge and shows how big just one choice is and willpower.

Natalie what you have shared in this blog is gold. Could the support of a loving practioner be the key to how we deal with other addictions not just chocolate?
Being willing to stop and really understand the motives behind the eating behaviour is extraordinary and shows a lot of commitment and dedication to self love for others to be inspired by.

“Sugar was my way of sweetening up my life.” It was for me too Natalie, as in boarding school we were allowed to bring in sweets from home and eat 4 a day. Sweets became my connection with home and warmth. I still eat some fruit – for sweetness, but chocolate and sweets themselves disappeared out of my life some time ago.

This stands out for me too- “The actual journey of ‘giving up chocolate and sweets’ however took many years, going through a lot of trial and error, because it all came from a need to ‘fix’ the problem rather than from choosing a genuine and loving care for myself and my wellbeing. ”
Since choosing to taking loving care of myself the need for chocolate or cakes has not been there.

Nathalie, what a joyful blog. It’s amazing the substitutes we have and how we use them when you say ‘Chocolate gave me great comfort when I felt alone, unloved and not met for just being me. What I really craved was to be truly met and deeply loved.’ I totally understand what you mean, I’ve been and can still be there with sweet / even salty food, and that comfort doesn’t work, it’s why we can binge and of course why we feel racy and uncomfortable in our bodies after. Thank God our bodies keep us honest and when we’re ready to look deeper we can further support them by true loving care and not just poor substitutes.

Nathalie it is true from my experience also that giving up on habits that provide comfort and solace from our hurts cannot happen from willpower or the ‘fix-it’ approach. It just perpetuates a cycle of effort, followed by failure, followed by the need to soothe oneself with one’s substance/s of choice. By choosing a loving and caring way with myself significant and lasting changes have occurred.

The actual journey of ‘giving up chocolate and sweets’ however took many years, going through a lot of trial and error, because it all came from a need to ‘fix’ the problem rather than from choosing a genuine and loving care for myself and my wellbeing.

So beautifully expressed for us all to learn and heal from – no matter what our addiction, habit, behaviour or crutch is, it is only the human outplay of an underlying hurt and we all have them. To love yourself deeply enough to explore and heal the hurts will always yield true and lasting change. I feel your blog will inspire many many people – thank you for sharing.

In a restaurant I connected with a lady today who was telling me about a friend of hers who is a naturopath who decided that she would give up sugar, all sugar. By all sugar that included any dried fruits, sweeteners or fruit itself. The whole lot. What was fascinating is that for the week after she stopped she was an emotional wreck, depressed, tearful and with headaches. She said her friend was amazed by the impact and harm of eating sugar.

In the process of eliminating sugar from my diet I have many times faltered, and each time during the “detox phase”, the effect on the body is immense, tiredness, irritability, hopelessness even. On the other side of that is a sense of freedom and ease in my body that can never be present when sugar is overriding and masking how I truly feel.

Thank you for mentioning the ‘hopelessness’, Heather, I’m ‘battling’ a sugar addiction and many times have hopeless thoughts about ever being able to not have sugar … thoughts that I know are not my own, but it can still be difficult to not be run by them sometimes!

I found myself craving all sorts of foods that would give me even the slightest “sugar high”, and as I continued to choose very nourishing foods the cravings disappeared, and the feeling of a sugar high actually became something I hated. It is a complete turn around from the sugar vacuum I used to be – sucking up any amount of sugar I could get my hands on.

Yes Jaime, the amount of sugar there is in our everyday foods is astonishing. Just the other day I looked at a cereal packet and for every 100g of the cereal, it contained 87% sugar. I pointed it out to my mum who had bought it for my brother and she was very shocked. We really do need to pay more attention to food labels.

What I notice lately is that the less I focus on what I can’t have or can and the less I have this idea that I have to stop eating something, the more simple it is. Then food just leaves me, without me trying with effort and will power to not eat it any longer.

Trying to drown out sadness carried through from childhood experiences is something I can definitely relate to. It has been a voyage of discovery to find out that this sadness can actually go away, I do not have to carry it, it does not own me or identify who I am. Quite remarkable really.

I loved reading this honest sharing about how difficult it is to give up sweets including chocolate. The quick, sweet fix always masking or covering up what needs to be dealt with underneath. I was certainly known as a sweet tooth over savoury foods. And now even though I do not eat lollies and chocolate I can find at times craving something sweet and looking for anything that will work as a sweet or chocolate substitute. The head can come up with some pretty crazy alternatives to chocolate and sweets.

One of the best things I’ve ever done and never regretted is getting rid of the chocolate and all other sweet foods out of my diet. Like you Nathalie I thought it would be nigh on impossible but now I can’t even imagine consuming those types of foods again. And I certainly don’t miss the emotional roller coaster ride.

I am always amazed when I look back on how I used to love to eat a whole block of chocolate by myself. Chocolate wasn’t my top food addiction but it was close. I grew up with chocolate as being one of our weekly treats that I looked forward to and continues to use it as a reward and treat as an adult. Now as I walk past the chocolates at the supermarket, I either get no response or a ‘no way’ response from my body. There is just no pull there. This is what is freeing, to not be pulled around and controlled by an addiction.

I used to love chocolate – my go-to food when I was feeling low. I haven’t eaten it for years now. This week in my local supermarket a woman was giving out samples from a luxury chocolate box. I smiled and refused, saying that I don’t eat chocolate. She looked genuinely astonished. I also realised there was no temptation for me to try one. Great to know that particular addiction has left for good.

Being addicted to chocolate is no different to being addicted to drugs or alcohol or gambling. To be free of any sort of addiction we need to re-connect with our bodies and deal with our childhood hurts. Instead of trying to bury them with distractions and numbing devices such as addictions.

Yes Mary-Louise. We can sometime look down on other addictions as being very bad, and think we are doing OK because our addiction is seen as harmless or at least not against the law. We don’t even see it as an addiction, but we are just fooling ourselves.

I totally agree Mary-Louise, ‘Being addicted to chocolate is no different to being addicted to drugs or alcohol or gambling’. or anything for that matter. I have recently read a brilliant blog by Danielle Pereira about our addiction to competition and recognition. This addiction too requires that we take another look at our connection with ourselves, and our ability to future love and appreciate ourselves from our very heart.

I find myself amazed at times by the effect that certain foods can have on the body. I remember having a chocolate binge 6 months after stopping and spent nearly 3 days yo-yoing from hyperactive to tears, to depressed to delirious. I felt completely out of control of my emotions and erratic reactions. This is a great article exposing how trying to use food to not feel what is there to be felt is just abuse compared to honouring what is there to be felt.

I was reflecting on reading this about the term ‘giving up’ something. It is like we know it isn’t good for us from the beginning, if it is something we need to ‘give up’. I too loved chocolate in the many forms it came. Like you Nathalie, it came to a point where the effects I could feel in my body no longer appealed, and in fact discouraged my intake altogether. Hence chocolate (and alcohol and caffeine) have not been things I have truly ‘given up’ but rather removed gradually as they no longer fit with how I wished my body to feel. Honouring my body in this way has had remarkable effects on my health and wellbeing too. Thank you for your sharing here Nathalie – I’m sure it’s something many can relate to.

Yes I can relate to this Amelia. It never was a ‘giving up’ at the point that I really stopped eating chocolate. It was a loving choice towards myself as the negative effects of chocolate on my body had become so obvious! Giving up something still has the loading of having to let go something you really love and enjoy and that is is ‘heavy’ to do so, but my experience of letting go of chocolate and many other things like pizza, never felt that way. I actually felt quite joyful about letting them go as my body felt so much better without them.

I agree, Amelia, with your comments about what is ‘giving up’ a food. What I’ve also found is that an unsuitable food drops out of my diet by, a) I just don’t want to taste it anymore (because of its side-effects) and or b) I simply forget to buy it anymore in the weekly food shop (I love that, when it just doesn’t register anymore!). There is one ‘stubborn’ food that I feel addicted to, so I’m now wondering if I simply need to make a conscious decision to no longer have it in the house and then will so much appreciate the physical benefits of not having it, that buying it again does not enter my mind. Here we go, a living experiment …

Parents unconsciously make it harder for children to give up sweets because they tend to reward children with sweets and so they become laced with a false love and often this is harder to give up than the actual sweet. The sugar gives an illusion of a comforting love with temporarily fills us until we crave it again. And as you said Nathalie, ‘Chocolate gave me great comfort when I felt alone, unloved and not met for just being me. What I really craved was to be truly met and deeply loved.’ How sad that a beautiful child should need such a substitute for love.

Chocolate given as a reward to children is so common. I recall my grandmother giving me a chocolate bar every time I visited her. Even now I can remember their names! She also had a bowl of sweets out on the table all day. No surprise that when I went to boarding school, sweets and chocolate became my go-to substitute for love, comfort and warmth. Even now. although I gave up sugar a long time ago, I can still gravitate to sweet fruits.

I never thought I would be able to give up chocolate. It was such a big part of my life. I would consume huge amounts, especially if I was feeling down. It was also my treat for working hard and my quick fix when I was feeling exhausted. In fact it was never a desire of mine to give it up, and it never came into my head that I might one day stop eating it. What’s great about starting to make self-loving choices and becoming more aware of the body is that your body naturally does not crave those things any more. It then does not become a will power issue, but simply something you have grown out of and no longer need.

True Debra, I’ve found until it is a conscious choice to not consume something our body actually doesn’t want, rather than exercising our will via the means of ‘self control’, then the choice is one of a forced abstaining and doesn’t hold – it is still coming from the mind rather than the body.

‘What’s great about starting to make self-loving choices and becoming more aware of the body is that your body naturally does not crave those things any more. It then does not become a will power issue, but simply something you have grown out of and no longer need.’ So true Debra. No trying using will power – little unwanted habits – eating sweets included – just fade away as we make more self-loving choices.

It really is that simple – do we choose self love or self harm? And if we continue to choose self harm then in order to understand ourselves better uncovering what lies between us and love is really the only way to go. If we don’t do this for ourselves the body will only put up with so much before it’s messages become louder and some illness or disease will result.

I’m still craving chocolate and have a ‘given-up’ feeling around ever being ‘free’ of this craving, but the other day I had a glimpse of how self-care provides such a platform that this ‘coping mechanism’ is not there anymore, so now I’m ‘building’ this self-care platform, brick by brick, and am determined to not give up. Plus I’ll go to an esoteric practitioner for support.

Absolutely Debra. And this is the best way to give something up. The will power game can be exhausting and sometimes sets us up for failure. The extra bonus that comes from making self loving choices is that we then naturally grow out of something that no longer serves us. Now that’s sustainable.

I have also struggled with addictions over the years which I used to put down to having an addictive or excessive personality. This was a lame excuse I know and am also fortunate to learn over the years the real reasons behind me wanting constant numbness. I can’t say I have any addictions anymore, but I also have to constantly be aware that they are still there waiting to pounce if I should slip back into my old ways.

It is exposing to consider how much we may have been fooled by the allure of its sweetness, its seeming innocence only to then have to face the resultant impacts it has over our whole entire being and its seductive additive nature as one of the ultimate numbing tool in life.

As I build the love for myself – which then beautifully also reaches out to others – I am finding that my desire for sweet is disappearing. This seems nothing short of miraculous to me. It wasn’t anything to do with will power – just addressing my hurts and coming to accept and appreciate myself for who I am and what I can bring just by being me. I found that I had been buying certain fruits still – out of habit – and when I stopped I realised I didn’t miss them at all!

I agree Nathalie, no amount of anything can fill a void, not even by with-holding and using willpower. Love is a huge void of world wide epidemic. The lovely thing is we can feed this void with honest inner awareness and expressing this self-love.

I found myself stopping and realising the other day that I no longer eat chocolate, not only do I not eat it but I don’t crave or miss it which is incredible because I always had a sweet tooth growing up and loved chocolate.

Although not addicted to sugar now I can really relate to what you have shared Nathalia; thank you for highlighting such an important issue.
I can really appreciate the transformation you have made and the hurts you have healed to kick the sugar addiction.
Your blog, expression and journey are certainly an inspiration for us all.

Some people like their chocolate, some other like their nuts (me). In the end it is all the same, as the reason we eat this is for comfort and to dull ourselves. I have been fooling myself for some time to think that nuts is not as bad as chocolate, but oh what an arrogance, as it is exactly the same.

Me too Mariette – on the face of it nuts are nutritious and a healthy food choice but I know that I eat for a different reason, just as you say to dull ourselves and to feel less. Sometimes it is not just what we eat but the reasons behind why we eat it that can be so significant in the effect the food has. Are we listening to our bodies call for what is needed or avoiding something we wish to ignore or change into something different. This can all begin at the point we are shopping for our food and what we are feeling as we select the items from the shelves. How we buy it will influence how we eat it.

Once we develop an awareness of how some foods effect our bodies, it is far easier to let go
of them when we honestly nominate why we have a need for eating them when we feel the damage they are having on our body.

‘What I really craved was to be truly met and deeply loved.’ – I feel that is the reason any of us get addicted to drugs, alcohol, chocolate, tv etc is because what we are really missing is love. When we begin to truly love ourselves we can begin to address the addictions that no longer serve us in anyway.

until there is balance and harmony and reconnection with a deep inner truth, food will always be an energetic substitute for what is missing in our connection with ourselves… this is undeniable, however much one squirms upon hearing it.

So true, our coping mechanisms are our coping mechanisms no matter how supposedly innocent or acceptable they may seem to society and those around you. Drug addicts mix with drug addicts so that their addiction is seen as normal… Coffee, sugar and chocolate addiction is seen as normal and yet they equally poison our body and mask so many unspoken conversations. Until we reconnect to those conversations we will always have a need for coping mechanisms.

Sugar – the sweet and inviting poison that tastes so good in the mouth and so lethal on the body. Everything you have shared Nathalie is true and the moment we are reaching for it is the moment we least need it as our body is asking to express something, usually something we have kept buried deep within us. I appreciate even now those moments when the craving comes up as it reminds me to check-in and acknowledge whatever is going on that doesn’t feel true. My way has become more loving, still and reflective and the body thanks me everyday for the changes I have made by not having sugar. You are right when you say it is an ongoing unfolding way – each moment brings an opportunity to be true, it’s as simple as that. Thanks Nathalie.

I have never been a chocoholic but have sometimes turned to chocolate or sugar to numb feelings, sometimes not even sure what I am numbing myself from. Some deeper stuff that is buried, that wants to stay comfortably buried. What I notice when I turn to sugar is it completely makes me tired. So it’s about really getting to the bottom of what is buried, which will help stop the cravings when they come up.

Giving things up caused me to rebel – I didn’t want to feel my emptiness. As I have built more love for myself – I have found I don’t have to give things up – they give me up – as my body no longer desires them and I then realise I haven’t consumed/bought sweet foods. No pain, just love.

Sue, the thing is that we think that our bodies need or desire certain foods, for example chocolate, but seemingly this is not right, as something else longs for it – our mind, as our thoughts are leading us to eating chocolate in the first place. It is true though that when we look at why we want or long for certain foods, and this need is healed, there is more space to feel what our body actually wants, and so we can choose to eat foods that actually make our body feel more vital than sluggish! This is the true power of our choices, this is what we have in our hands when we make choices from our body instead of our mind.

When a giant dark chocolate bar was not enough, there was an insatiable need churning inside of me that no amount of sweet melting pleasure could touch. I felt so unsettled and knew of no where to turn to but the cupboard with the chocolate in it for support. Eventually when I was shown a way to be more loving with myself, the chocolate and its consequences didn’t seem so appealing anymore.

Natalie, I can relate to indulging with chocolate to feel better about myself. The more I learnt to feel my body and be honest in how I was truly feeling and the harmful effect chocolate and other sweets had on my body, the more I was able to accept and value myself and change the choices I was making to ones that truly supported me.

Isn’t it fascinating how the body can lap up addiction? Chocolate and sugar is a great example here because it is such a huge and hidden problem that we are only just starting to look at. But the fact is, the sugar could have been replaced with alcohol or smoking or any other habit we have a tendency to fall into and crave like no tomorrow. I know the feeling well, when your mind takes over and all you think about is that one thing you know you shouldn’t and you think the only way to make it go away is to just have it. But wow how far is this from stopping, listening to our bodies and asking if we truly need what we are craving, or if this is just a trick to trap us further into an addiction that is the perfect excuse not to be responsible.There are still some things I catch myself falling for – clothes, foods, too much computer – and in that moment I can clearly see I’ve simply chosen to check out and make what is outside of me more important than who I am.
In my experience, it isn’t about just removing the chocolate, I know I’ll just find another replacement as there are so many options, but it is about connecting with myself to understand where the craving is coming from and perhaps appreciating who I am first is what I am truly craving.

I agree Hannah. It can be so easy to replace one food, habit or addiction with another, unless one addresses the cause that made me seek out chocolate etc in the first place. Finding the sweetness within ourselves first, then the craving can simply dissipate. No willpower required, because when I use that I find I can get resentful, or fall at the first hurdle.

It is incredible to think that I used to actually plan my day around what sweet treats I could have, usually something with chocolate in it – and the after affects of these treats mainly going unnoticed, such as grumpiness, fatigue, intense cravings for more sugar. I would just enjoy the sensation in my mouth and not relate it to what came next. Until such time that I did begin to connect all the dots together and observe the way I acted and behaved after eating sugary chocolaty foods. This gave me the chance to factor in the consequences of those foods each time I went to eat them, and this gave me the chance to ask myself if I could afford those consequences that day. Which helped me to prioritise the activities in my life with much more love and clarity of what is really important to me.

When put like this the choice to treat ourselves with sugary foods seems less like a treat and more like a chore, with the negatives outweighing the positives. Once I have gone without such foods for a few days, when I reintroduce them, the taste is never that great either. To me it’s all just habit!

We eat in a very short-sighted way – with an instant enjoyment of the taste without considering or even allowing ourselves to feel the consequences. I can sometimes know very early on in the day what I am going to buy to eat later on – I can feel as if I have let in an energy that is determined to ‘sin’ with something I know isn’t good for me but there’s a belligerent attitude that says ‘I’m going to eat it anyway’. Other days I don’t get any kind of craving and I eat only what nourishes. What’s the difference? If I am connected with me, not tired or looking outside for approval, then there is no need for me to eat